


give me strength, give me salvation

by luminfics, mypleaxiure



Series: Round 2017 [13]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, references to religious beliefs, slight underage sex (only light tho)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 18:09:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11110050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminfics/pseuds/luminfics, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mypleaxiure/pseuds/mypleaxiure
Summary: Minseok has never wanted to put lyrics to a certain inescapable hymn singing inside of him―until it crescendoes and threatens to consume him. [a Catholic school!au]





	give me strength, give me salvation

**Author's Note:**

> Username: anonymous until reveals  
> Prompt Number: #[92](https://twitter.com/xiuhanaesthetic/status/802343346840670208)  
> Title: Give Me Strength, Give Me Salvation  
> Rating: PG-15 / NC-17  
> Word Count: 35k+  
> Warnings: referenced homophobia, internalized homophobia, references to religious beliefs, slight underage sex  
> Summary: Minseok has never wanted to put lyrics to a certain inescapable hymn singing inside of him―until it crescendoes and threatens to consume him.  
> Author's Notes: First, I would like to thank the mods for being so patient with me and for allowing my very last-minute prompt change! To my dearest beta, for keeping me sane while I crazed through this thing, I can’t thank you enough for rescuing this child from the claws of my clumsy writing. Love you~ ( ˘ ³˘)♥  
> A few things before you read: As this is a fictional work, beliefs and opinions portrayed in this story should not be considered to reflect on the author. In no way does this attempt to be a commentary on real-life parallels. The story takes place in the mid-90s through the late 00s; ages mentioned are Korean ages. In writing this, I tried my best to be respectful of the cultures and customs that come into the story. I am aware that a lot of things may still be inaccurate, for which I ask you to temporarily pretend things written here are believable. (´∀｀)

He must be hovering in that space between sleep and consciousness when it starts. Pulled under by a melodic voice and an enticing image, he sees soft white, warm light, and then flesh: a body lying on a bed. He seems to be sitting up and looking from above, traversing by sight the rise and fall of someone’s naked shoulders and back. In the dream, he reaches out, a feather-light touch ghosting against porcelain skin. His fingertips follow the hills and plains of the naked flesh, until the faint touch morphs into a caress. Drawing circles onto the skin, feeling the person’s torso move with each steady breath.

He cannot help himself. His lips then follow the path that his fingers previously mapped out. Ever so gently, his mouth roves over the flesh presented to him, teasing it with gossamer kisses, sometimes with tongue poking out to taste the skin. Beneath him, a gasp rocks the terrain of flesh that he's exploring.

Then, his view shifts upwards. The person’s face is pressed against a pillow, turned to the left. He glimpses blond hair, then a distinctive, unmistakable jawline. Even in the dream, he starts to panic. Before he can fully take in the person’s facial features, however—

 

Minseok wakes up with a start, the taste of shame already coloring his tongue.

A shame too overpowering that he feels himself immediately going soft. He remains lying beneath the blankets, too guilty and panicked to move. Early morning sunlight permeates the gaps in the curtains, faintly illuminating the expectedly messy dorm room of three growing boys, but Minseok is only vaguely aware of it. His mind is in turmoil so soon after waking up. He wants to rid himself of the images from the dream, but they still flash in his mind even with his eyes open. No, he can’t have dreamt of…can he?

With his roommates still asleep and oblivious, Minseok spends the next few minutes willing himself to calm down. Though there is a part of him that still feels a leftover pleasure from the dream, the self-reproach is rapidly spreading through him, making his body feel leaden, his mind a tumult. When he is sure his obvious problem has subsided and that he can stand on his feet, he gathers his things and makes his way to the communal showers. He tries not to look in the direction of a certain blond head poking out from beneath blankets.

Minseok stays under the cold spray longer than he usually takes, his mind churning, berating himself for the images his subconscious conjured up in his sleep. A heavy feeling sits in his gut, making him scrub his body harder than he normally does, a self-inflicted punishment. Being a teenage boy, it is not the first time such dreams have occurred, but it _is_ the first time that the dream person morphed into someone he knows. Someone whom he prays will never know what he just dreamt of him. Someone sleeping in the bed next to his.

When Minseok returns to the room, calm for the moment but with an aftertaste of unease simmering under his skin, he sees that his two roommates are awake. Yixing, with a dopey smile on his face, is the first one to greet him a jovial good morning, which he returns somewhat half-heartedly. He does not make eye contact with Lu Han, whose eyes follow him curiously, probably wondering why he woke up so early when it’s the weekend, a Saturday.

Minseok is inevitably subdued throughout breakfast and when he, Lu Han, and Yixing are hanging out on the school grounds. Throughout the morning, he offers only short responses to either of his closest friends’ chatter. They spend the day outside, soaking up the remnants of summer, homework temporarily forgotten and relegated to the next day. The autumn breeze is strong enough to ruffle their hair, and Lu Han laughs at the mess that has become of Yixing’s jet-black locks. When Lu Han turns to Minseok, still with that curious look on his face, instead of laughing he pats his hair back into place without a word. Minseok stares into Lu Han’s eyes for a moment, trying to read the emotion behind it. But he has always had difficulty deciphering him sometimes, and he’s afraid that it is _his_ own eyes that will give him away. He averts his gaze without saying anything.

Yixing strums a chord on his guitar and sings some lame, made-up lyrics about his hair and the weather, and Minseok laughs for the first time that day.

 

 

 

After lunch, Minseok steals away from the two of them and heads off to the school church alone. The place has always given him a certain kind of peace, a calm bred by familiar hymns and his mother’s fingers on the piano and from years of being brought up believing it as a sanctuary of acceptance. Today, though, he can recall none of the tranquility as he steps inside the arched marble doorway. What his mother may have neglected to tell him is how frail and conditional that acceptance can sometimes be.

He finds himself walking along the aisle with no real direction to his wandering. Afternoon sunshine streams in through the open panes and the stained-glass windows, alternating light and shade, making negatives out of every other pew in the half-lit church. He glances up to regard the cherubs painted on the vaulted ceiling, wondering if even they disapprove of the reason for his distress. His feet eventually lead him to the confessional, even though he knows the priest is not in. He just wants some time alone, to think, to process what is taking place within him.

Minseok enters and slumps on the cushioned bench inside the box. The screen separating the compartments is closed, the box empty except for his presence. He sighs, deep and loud in the small space, and tries to rationalize with himself.

It is only natural, isn’t it? Minseok sees him every day; has he not read somewhere that dreams like that might be displaced onto people you know, especially people who you regularly come into contact with? Especially because living in a boarding school afforded him limited social connections other than his schoolmates with whom he has already spent years with. His subconscious probably did not mean it. Isn’t that how it works?

Minseok does not want to put it into words. But like a moth drawn to a flame, a jumper to the precipice, a part of him also wants to examine it, put it up to the light. Because as overwhelming and seemingly wrong as it is, he also thinks that it might come close to what actually feels right.

His heart hammers at the dangerous thought.

How can he say it? How can such a thing feature in his thoughts, come out of his mouth? Can there ever be a scenario where it will overpower him less, enough to say it aloud, get it out of his system? What will his parents think if they know that—that he has dreamt of such a thing? If it’s said in a confession, will it be absolved? _Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last confession…_

The screen slides open with a din in the silent afternoon as Lu Han’s face pops into view. “You know you're alone in here, right?”

Minseok lets out a surprised squeal and clutches a hand to his chest. “Don’t do that!” he sputters for a bit, catching his breath to speak. “How long have you been in here?”

“Long enough to hear you start your spiel and stop you before it gets awkward.” Minseok flushes; he did not realize he was whispering the words. He could have cursed in that moment, if he knew how to. Lu Han tilts his head to the side. “You must have been sitting here for a while. Why were you trying to confess to empty air?”

Minseok stands up and tries to avoid the question. He exits the confessional and strides towards the heavy double doors of the chapel, Lu Han following at his heels. He knows that the taller boy is silently imploring him to answer, feels his eyes bore into the back of his head, and he suspects Lu Han won’t let it go until he does. “Nothing really. Just… practicing, I guess.”

Lu Han hums, some curtness in it. Thankfully though, he leaves it at that. Minseok does not want to answer questions right now, especially questions about why he has chosen to be alone that afternoon, sitting in the confessional for about an hour, trying to put words to the turmoil inside of him, trying to decide if it should even _be_ put into words, or if he ought to just let it fester inside of him, unnamed, and eventually, _hopefully_ , unthought.

Because Minseok is sixteen, and he is afraid to confront the reason why his best friend appeared in his dream, making him ache in ways he should never allow himself to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The first time he saw him, Minseok believed Lu Han to be some kind of angel.

At the start of his first year in middle school, all students were gathered in the assembly hall for the opening ceremony, the glow of ornate chandeliers hanging above overpowered by the soft sunlight spilling onto the marble floor through the east windows, royal blue draperies half-open. At the front of the hall, the headmaster spoke about welcoming the new students for the school year, but Minseok barely registered it. His younger cousin, Junmyeon, stood beside him, listening dutifully.

Knowing his mother stayed at the back of the hall together with some other parents to see him off, Minseok craned his neck to look for her. He needed to see her face to calm his nerves. On the way there, he had told himself he was not about to be the kid who kept looking back, but he couldn’t help it. He was thirteen, but having never lived away from home, Minseok was understandably fretful about living with a bunch of his peers.

In his search, his gaze caught something bright. It was a boy with white-blond hair standing near the windows, at the edge of the dapple of morning light. It reflected off his hair, making it look as though there was a halo over his head. It matched his angelic features, face neutral and turned toward the front of the hall. Even from this distance, Minseok could make out his doe-like, honey brown eyes, the light seemingly illuminating them from the inside out. Minseok did not know at the time, but it would mark the beginning of his belief in actual angels.

As if he could feel the press of someone’s stare, the boy shifted and met Minseok’s gaze. Minseok, too surprised to look away, merely watched as the boy sent him a soft smile. Junmyeon suddenly nudged his arm, wrenching his attention back to the front of the hall.

After a while, Minseok peeked back at the boy once more, but the slant of light had shifted, no longer painting him as some kind of celestial being.

The assembly ended, Minseok said goodbye to his mother—who affectionately told him and Junmyeon to keep out of trouble—and then the boys in his class went about the business of getting oriented in the new place they would have to call home for the next ten months. They were shown to the school buildings, their dormitories, the boys walking in two straight lines; Minseok made sure to never stray and call attention to himself on the first day there. To his relief, he learned he would be rooming with Junmyeon and another boy called Hakyeon, and together they ate dinner in the dining hall. At a quarter to ten, the call for lights-out in the middle school dorms sounded through the crackly speakers, and Minseok dutifully started his prayers at the foot of his bed, just as his mother had taught him, praying that all would be fine as he went to his classes for the next several months.

And  just fine did things go. Minseok was not really the type to seek out people and make a lot of friends, preferring the company of only a few and Junmyeon, of course, who remarked that rooming together for months to come was quite a change to when he was only able to visit Minseok’s family home for holidays—because his family lived in Seoul, and Minseok’s in the countryside. Minseok was not exactly shy; he spoke when spoken to or when he had stories to tell. He didn’t think he was especially popular, but he supposed his classmates found him amicable enough. At first, the classes were not that hard, and Minseok's main difficulty came from living away from home, far removed from the conventional schooling he had come from before, without his mother to hover over him at home.

He soon got used to it, though. His parents would phone him or send him letters, asking how he was doing, which classes were difficult, whether he needed anything—the last one a privilege that Minseok found increasingly easy to not make use of as the growing challenge of being less dependent on his parents took root in his mind, now that he was away. At school, he had the chance to not be Kim Minseok, the first son of a family that was descended from one of the country’s old noble clans and whose heritage was steeped in history. He just wanted to be Minseok, a good student, a dependable cousin, a kind friend. In March, he turned officially fourteen, and his parents sent him a couple of new books and a CD player. Minseok was thankful; they would help to keep him entertained, so far away was he from home.

With this freedom away from the eyes of his parents a welcome novelty, at first Minseok did not consider that he was soon to grow up in another, far more constricting environment. Middle schoolers were not allowed out of the gated confines of the academy except on supervised events in the sleepy, valley town where the school had stood for decades; essentials that were not already provided in their living quarters were routinely bought downtown by school staff; all personal effects were accounted for and some hobbies to be done only during certain free times. But the greatest constringent was the school’s pervading atmosphere of stifling tradition and hallowed justice, an overtone that colored every nook and cranny of its timeworn halls. Minseok, brought up as he was in such an environment—though a muted version of it, and not lacking in love from his family—could not yet tell the difference.

During school breaks, however, he relished going back to his family home: where he had his mother affectionately nagging him about going to Mass with her; his younger sister being generally annoying and adorable in the way only younger siblings could; and his father telling him that he was slowly growing up to be the kind of young man he was expected to be. 

Eventually, even middle school first years could not escape the rigorous academic methods their school was famous for. Minseok found himself spending more and more time in the library, between the dusty old shelves, often looking up how to read an English sentence, or trying to find answers to questions about literature that stumped him. Math and sciences were no problem; he was excellent at them, found their precision familiar and comforting to the workings of his mind. Social studies and religious studies, he could do with just fine. On the other hand, foreign language and literature, with which he had a slightly harder time, often had him poring over thick tomes and reading guides. Junmyeon often offered to help, but he could not look out for him always.

On one such occasion when Minseok was in the library did he come across the angelic-faced boy again in close quarters. He shared some classes with him, and with the academy being an exclusive, relatively small one, it was easy to know the names of most of the boys in his year. He had heard he was a Chinese boy by the name of Lu Han; he often spotted him together with another Chinese boy who often wore a dimpled smile, and some other rotation of friends. Minseok found his dyed-blond hair curious, wondering how such a thing could be allowed at their school, with its unyielding traditional rules.

Minseok was in a deserted corner of the library, perusing the titles on the spines, head tilted, when someone walked into the aisle he was standing in. Minseok’s head turned and, upon seeing it was the angelic-faced boy who so suddenly disrupted his solitude, picked up a random book in surprise to hide his face behind. Minseok could not explain it, but he was still mildly embarrassed at being caught staring by the boy at the start of the term, even though he probably did not even remember or know of him, given all those months in between.

Minseok’s eyes bore into the page but he could not take in a word of it; he was very, very aware of the other’s presence, coming closer as he browsed the titles. Lu Han paused a few feet away, and Minseok was perhaps just imagining that he could feel the other boy’s eyes on him. After some moments, he could hear that Lu Han must have picked up a book, rifled through it briefly, and closed it again.

Minseok, however, did not count on the other boy speaking to him. “That book you're reading is upside down, you know.” His melodic voice sounded like there was a laugh hiding beneath its surface, but it didn’t sound mean. Then, as quickly as he had appeared, he walked away from the shelves, carrying his book with him.

Minseok was almost amazed at his capability of being caught by the boy doing something embarrassing.

Mortification aside, Minseok had year-end exams to get through, so he had to get over it. He continued to study with Junmyeon, sometimes with Hakyeon, and even had some upperclassmen helping him out, lending him their old notes or books, because they thought him ‘adorable.’ (Minseok merely shrugged in confusion at the description, but accepted their help anyway.) He was always thankful and unfailingly polite, just as he was brought up to be.

Thus, Minseok finished the first year of his middle school life away from home without much incident and with very high grades. He was happy to return home at the end of the year. His parents were proud of him, his private tutor was proud of him, even his old nanny took to pinching his cheeks even more (even though he was now a grown teenager!). During the break, his parents rewarded him with a trip to Japan together with his younger sister, who mostly wanted to go to the teddy bear museum and tried to decide which ones might look like her and her brother.

A month and a half later, Minseok had to go back to school for the new term. He had made sure to buy Junmyeon some souvenirs which he was looking forward to giving to him, but on the car ride there, his mother said the school had notified her that new rooming arrangements were made for the year due to a few students migrating or some other matter. Upon arriving back to their school in Gangwon, Minseok wheeled his suitcase into the new dorm room he would be sharing with two others, and had to stop in his tracks upon seeing who his new roommates were.

He did not know who to expect, but it was certainly not the friendly, innocent-looking boy whom he knew to be Lu Han’s friend, greeting him a good afternoon and introducing himself as Zhang Yixing. And of course, Lu Han himself, who shook his hand and said, “You’re Kim Minseok, right?”

It was a new term, a new fall, and he would be rooming with the boy that he was so intrigued by.

 

 

 

Maybe it was Lu Han’s and Yixing’s brand of friendship, but Minseok assimilated into their little group as easy as breathing, as if they had all been friends the year before.

There were several things Minseok had since learned  about Lu Han and Yixing then. Lu Han: that he loved soccer like Minseok did, and though the school did not have an official team that played in matches, it was their favorite sport in physical education. That Lu Han’s parents were rich businesspeople in China who allowed their only son to attend school in Korea because Lu Han had an aunt in Seoul. Also, that no amount of pleading could deter Lu Han from calling Minseok _baozi_ because his cute face apparently resembled a dumpling. As for Yixing: Minseok liked that he was kind and funny, in the way that he made other people laugh with his innocent silliness. That it was endearing to see him trying hard to improve his Korean, which Minseok liked to help him  with. He also found him very creative and intelligent; he could only daydream about having the kinds of talent that Yixing was a natural at. There were other little facts, of course, not that Minseok was necessarily keeping count; there was already a lot that he knew about both of his roommates and found that they were very easy to befriend and get along with since the year started.

Five months into Minseok’s friendship with his two roommates, he learned about Lu Han’s dyed-blond hair.

It was one of the things he reflected that probably caught his attention about Lu Han in the first place.  Minseok couldn’t even explain why he was curious; it didn't seem like a big deal to anyone else, but he was pretty sure that it was in the school rules not to have dyed hair. He was just… mystified, he guessed.

One weekend, after playing a one-on-one game of soccer (Lu Han won), he and Minseok went to catch their breath and join Yixing on the bleachers with his guitar. As Minseok took big gulps of water from the bottle he brought, he watched as Lu Han ran his hands through his hair, and he remembered about his particular curiosity.

“Your roots are showing,” Minseok observed in as casual a voice as he could manage.

“Oh, are they? I guess I have to dye them again then,” Lu Han said, wiping the sweat off his neck. He noticed that Minseok was still staring. “What?”

“You do it yourself?” Minseok asked, awed.

“Yeah, of course. I do most things myself,” Lu Han replied.

“Hey, way to forget me,” Yixing said.

“Oh yeah, and Xing helped that one time.”

Minseok figured that it was a good time as any to ask. “How come you’re allowed to do that?”

Something came over Lu Han’s face that told Minseok he understood what he was really asking about in the first place. “Well, before I came here, I requested it to my parents. That I dye my hair, I mean. And when I got here, the school never really questioned it.” He shrugged; even the movement was elegant. “I figured they had something to do with it.”

Minseok internally marveled at the kind of autonomy Lu Han had, if he could dye his hair as a young teenager and to go to school in _another country_ _._ Minseok did not really like to wonder about other people (his mother would say it was bad form to be nosy), but Lu Han’s reply made him seem further shrouded in mystery. “Huh. Wow. I mean, that's cool.” He tried to play off his curiosity as a joke. “Are you sure you're not some kind of mafia heir?”

Yixing laughed at that. “Actually, I think he might be. He never tells us about how his life is back in Beijing. He hasn’t even invited me to his house yet.” Then Yixing switched to Mandarin, his tone teasing.

Lu Han replied in the same language, the unfamiliar syllables indicating fondness and faux annoyance. Minseok didn’t mean to make his pouty expression that said, _You're talking about something I can't understand again_ , but Lu Han saw right through it. “Don't mind Yixing. His parents sent him a letter the other day about concentrating on music less and on classes more, so he's _nicely_ taking it out on me.” Lu Han poked Minseok’s forehead in the middle of his eyebrows.

Minseok snickered, but _that_ was another thing about Lu Han, the touching. He had noticed a few months back that Lu Han liked making physical contact with his friends, and he seemed especially clingy with him, always asking Minseok to do things or to go places together. Not that Minseok minded very much; it was natural among boys their age,  wasn’t it? But he was not exactly used to physical contact from anyone outside his family, so largely sheltered was he growing up. It took some months to get used to—in fact, he might still be getting used to it—but after a while, he started to feel like a child basking in the presence of the sun, both attracted to the warmth and afraid of sunburn.

Strangely enough, the more Minseok knew about Lu Han, the more interesting he seemed to him, and if possible, more enigmatic. They were in a window nook in a corner of the library’s third floor one late afternoon. For some reason, almost nobody ever came to the area, perhaps because it was practically hidden from sight by several shelves of Latin books, which Minseok had never seen anyone read during his time in the school so far. Thus, the three roommates had somehow made it their hangout where they could talk at a normal volume despite being in the library.

It was just the two of them that day, though. Minseok sat on the cushioned seat by the window, eyes closed, head leaned against the panes. Behind his closed eyelids, he could make out the faded orange light of near-sundown. His mind had had enough of studying and homework that day, and he was exhausted. Lu Han sat on the other end of the seat across from him, a book in hand. He could feel Lu Han’s eyes on him, so he looked over at the other boy, his own sight adjusting against the gleam that backlit his friend. Patiently, he waited for Lu Han to say something.

Lu Han did not seem too bothered about being caught out. “Do you miss your family?”

Minseok was a bit taken aback by the question. “Um, yeah, I guess. Why do you ask?”

Lu Han did not answer him. “Tell me about them.”

If he was being honest, Minseok felt uncomfortable at being asked straight out, but something in Lu Han’s voice prompted him to answer. “Well, um, you already know my dad works in the government. My mom… she’s kind but protective over me and my sister, sometimes a little too much. She didn’t want me to go here so far away from home, but my dad insisted, because he studied here too.” Minseok paused, thinking of what else to say. “I like volunteering at our local church with her and my sister. We’ve always done it for as long as I can remember, so I miss doing that with them sometimes. Um, what else do you want to know?”

“I don’t have any siblings,” Lu Han said. “What’s it like having a sister?”

“Well, she’s cute and smart. She’s still clingy with me now but I suspect she’ll get tired of her uncool big brother soon enough.” Minseok chuckled. He had to ask again though. “Why? Do you miss your parents?”

Lu Han just shrugged. “Hmm, I guess not really. They aren’t home that often. I was just thinking that it’ll be almost two years since I last saw them,” Lu Han confessed, tone sheepish.

Minseok’s ears perked at that. To his then limited knowledge, Lu Han never seemed sheepish or rueful about anything. He was always confident, carefree, and playful. “Really? Didn’t you go home for the winter and summer holidays?” Minseok asked.

“When I went back to Beijing both times, they weren’t home. They were on a business trip.” Lu Han shrugged again. Minseok noticed he did that a lot, as if he was physically shaking off his worries or making them smaller. “They made sure to leave the household staff with everything I needed though, so it wasn’t really bothersome. But it did get boring. Eventually I just went back to my aunt’s place in Seoul.”

It was quiet for a while, Minseok turning over his friend’s words in his mind. His clueless young mind did not really have a good grasp of what it was like with other families so he could not judge, but it occurred to him that Lu Han’s circumstances must leave a lot of room for loneliness. It felt as though he had just learned something very important about the other boy.

“Minseok…” Something in Lu Han’s voice had him looking up at once. “Do you ever feel that you already have everything, so it’s pointless to want more, but you do it anyway?”

Minseok could not help but regret his inadequacy as a confidant. But then again, he had not really expected this kind of talk from Lu Han today. “I don’t know,” he said in a small voice. “What makes you say that?”

“I’ve just been thinking… Everything I need has always been handed to me. If I have everything, I shouldn’t want anymore, right? And if _everything_ was just given to me, I actually own _nothing_ , do I?”

A part of Minseok was bothered that Lu Han was talking like this, so far from his friend’s usual demeanor, in a voice he had never heard him speak with before—now a raging current, suddenly overflowing when it had always been calm and steady to his ears. He looked out the window at the growing shadows cast by the trees and buildings, the contrast of sunset and shade playing on his eyesight. Minseok had a feeling that this was not about material possessions. He was not sure about the right words to say, but he had to try.

“I don’t really understand everything but… It’s normal to want more, right? You can’t just stay the same all the time. And… maybe there is something in your life that you can call your own? Something that was not given to you, something no one else has?” Minseok swallowed, eyes downcast, thoroughly unsure. “And if you can’t see it yet, well… maybe you just have to look for it.”

When he glanced over at Lu Han again, his face was turned towards the window, half in shadow, watching the school grounds slowly being enveloped by darkness. Or maybe he was staring at nothing at all. Minseok was reminded of the first time he had seen him, haloed by morning light that first day, and he marveled at the difference that almost two years—in fact, even a single afternoon—could make in each of them.

Without a word, Lu Han touched his fingers lightly to Minseok’s hand that was resting on top of the seat between them. “I guess you’re right,” he said, not meeting his eyes.

Minseok was slowly learning about the kinds of freedom people had in the world.

It took everything in him not to pull away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Minseok sometimes thinks that being Lu Han’s roommate is the bane of his existence in many ways. Like now, with Lu Han whining about how if he’s cooped up indoors for another day by the rain, he’ll go absolutely crazy.

“ _I’m_ going crazy!” Minseok groans. “I just want to do this stupid paper on Dante and you are not helping.” With his books and papers strewn about his desk and bed, a  madman might very well have torn through the place. They're reading Dante Alighieri’s _The Inferno_ for class, and if Minseok doesn’t finish this assignment tonight, he is the one who will go mad.

Yixing is on his bed, listening to music through his headphones and slightly moving his limbs to the beat, blissfully ignoring the hysterics of his two friends.

“I really want to play soccer, okay?” Lu Han groans to no one in particular, sprawled with his head at the foot of his bed. “I swear I’ll hit myself with Yixing’s guitar if the storm doesn’t let up by tomorrow.”

Yixing lifts one side of his headphones to speak. “Don't involve my baby in this,” he chides Lu Han. “And even if the rain stops tonight, the field will still be muddy tomorrow.”

Lu Han ignores Yixing’s reality check as if he has not heard anything. Instead, he goes over to Minseok’s bed and sits down, right beside Minseok who is sitting at his desk, poring over the book in question for reference. “Minseok Minseok Minseok,” Lu Han continues to bug him, leaning over and putting his chin on Minseok’s shoulder. “Play with me tomorrow.”

Minseok sighs, feeling a bit resigned. He pushes Lu Han’s forehead lightly off his shoulder and stands up. “I’m going. I’m not failing this assignment because of your noise.” He gathers his books and sheets of paper into his bag and flees the room. Before he’s out of earshot, he hears Yixing ask, “Are you done annoying him?” and Lu Han reply, “What? He won't fail.”

Minseok proceeds to the library, keeping to the covered walkways and under the awnings to avoid the rain. He’s glad he’s wearing a hooded sweater, the thick layer keeping the cold at bay. Minseok thinks back to his roommates. The two of them know he’s not really angry. They also know that he has probably never been truly angry in his life. Minseok has always been the patient one among them, even when his roommates, particularly Lu Han, are being playfully insufferable sometimes.

Settling down on their usual table in the study hall, Minseok looks around the room. There are a few students about; given that it is after dinner, no doubt most would rather take the comfort of their dorms when studying or doing their homework for the night. He takes a moment to stare out the window where the autumn deluge continues to knock against the panes, white noise in the peaceful building. A lamppost outside helps Minseok to see the rain cascading in a slant, the droplets seemingly sparkling with artificial radiance. To be fair to Lu Han, Minseok is getting a bit of a cabin fever as well, with their outdoor periods and his morning runs (his personal habit) cancelled for three days straight due to the weather. But he’s not going to think about it too much when he still has homework to do.

With schoolwork taking up most of his waking hours, Minseok can _almost_ believe everything is back to normal. He can almost forget about his dream last weekend. Since that day, he has resolved to pretend nothing is out of the ordinary; he  can't very well ignore his best friend for too long without Lu Han confronting him about it, can he?

Minseok puts a brake on his rumination to concentrate on homework. He picks up his copy of _The Inferno_ , browsing through some sections for motifs that he might have missed reading into for his paper. It’s a riveting epic poem narrated by Dante, who travels through nine circles of Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. Minseok reckons it’s imaginative, that there’s a corresponding punishment to certain sins as told in the poem, such as: the lustful are blown by violent storms, the wrathful condemned to fight each other endlessly, the treacherous frozen in a lake of ice. He is also glad it’s only fictional.

After some skimming, he jots down some more ideas in his draft. It takes a while for his mind to piece ideas together when it comes to literature, so Minseok thinks the silence of the library, removed from his roommates’ noise, is actually a blessing.

About half an hour later, he senses rather than sees Lu Han drop down onto the seat next to him. Minseok does not look up, continuing to scratch words onto the paper, not daring to stop once he’s gotten going.

“So, um… do you already have an answer for guide question number three?” Lu Han asks tentatively.

Minseok takes a while to answer, partly because he’s still writing, partly to draw it out and toy with Lu Han.

“During his trip through Hell, the character of Dante is at first sympathetic for the people he encounters,” Minseok reads from his paper, not looking up, “but he grows increasingly unsympathetic as he goes deeper, meaning that he’s getting desensitized to the suffering and punishment he sees... which is a bit hypocritical because he’s a sinner himself.” Minseok adds the last several words as he thinks them and punctuates the paper in emphasis. Finally, he meets Lu Han’s eyes. “But I don’t think he has much going for him as a character, does he?”

“I personally don’t find it a fault of his,” Lu Han says without missing a beat. “Doesn’t that also mean that he’s slowly accepting God’s justice? The deeper he goes, the more he witnesses God’s punishment, and the more he doesn’t question the righteousness of it, as a ‘good believer’ would. I think that’s the poem’s way of saying the punishments are just, or something.”

Minseok has to acknowledge to himself that it’s a good analysis, so he goes to add it to his paragraph, just as Lu Han’s given him a lot of ideas about literature so many times before. “Just paraphrase it a bit,” Lu Han adds. Minseok smiles in response.

They continue discussing their homework, bouncing off each other’s ideas, and Minseok is thankful that Lu Han’s good at this stuff. When Minseok feels that he has enough material to turn into a proper paper, he puts down his pen and leans back in his seat.

“It’s just so… contradictory, you know? Dante the character can be sympathetic, but Dante the poet ‘decided’ on God’s punishments in the first place.”

“I know.” Lu Han smiles. “That’s why I like it. Goodness and justice aren’t black and white.”

Minseok laughs. “So you _can_ be mature.”

“What? I’m plenty mature.” Then Lu Han turns serious. “I’m sorry about earlier. I was just teasing you a bit.”

Minseok lays his head down on the table on top of his forearms, head turned towards Lu Han. “You know I’m not really mad,” he states gently. He appreciates the apology in any case. Lu Han is a good friend like that—even though he can be petty sometimes.

Lu Han adopts the same pose, head turned towards Minseok. Sitting like this, their faces are close. “I know. But you’ve been quiet more than usual. I thought maybe there was something wrong.”

Minseok’s breath catches in his lungs, but he hopes it doesn’t show on his face. He can almost believe everything is back to normal between the two of them. _Almost_.

“Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine. I just haven’t been feeling too well. Because of the weather, probably.”

Minseok has never really been good at lying. He sees Lu Han reach out and before he knows it, his fingertips are skating his cheeks, the touch tender and worried. “Okay. But you can tell me anything, you know?”

Minseok sighs. “I know.” He takes the hand touching his face and sets it down on the table between them, patting it lightly to make Lu Han understand it isn’t some kind of rejection. But in that moment, he decides that he does not have to say anything, ever. He doesn’t even have to _think_ about it at all. It seems like a plausible plan.

He sits up and looks over his draft one more time. “So, have you figured out which circle of hell you’re going to end up in?” Minseok asks wryly. Lu Han just laughs.

 

 

 

The rain does abate, two days later, and Minseok and Lu Han have been getting stir-crazy enough to wake up extra early to go out but they do have enough sense to expect the field to be muddy. Lu Han brings a soccer ball anyway. They end up running laps around the track, just for something to do, then pass-kick the ball between them on the less damp parts of the oval, but that quickly gets boring for two teenage boys, so they retire to the bleachers. Somehow the world looks both waterlogged and refreshed, the morning’s vividness of colors a happy casualty of nature getting drenched. Minseok wants to trust that the weak sunlight filtering through the low-lying clouds will shine stronger later in the day.

Leaning back on his hands as he tries to catch his breath, Minseok basks in the slight cold of the morning made bearable by the reemerging sun’s rays. It feels good to be out after being cooped up indoors by the weather, and at least he doesn’t have to deal with Lu Han’s whining anymore. He thinks about his classes for the day: a recitation for philosophy and theology, a lecture in trigonometry, a supposedly difficult chemistry lab that he thinks he has prepared well enough for.

If anyone thinks Minseok’s teenage life is quite boring, well, he does not really feel it. He is happy enough to go to his classes, call his family every two weeks and send them letters, get completely stellar grades in math and chemistry where he’s lab partners with Junmyeon, play with and get along with his two best friends and roommates. Now being in high school, they are now allowed to go out to the town on weekends, which has certainly added much enjoyment to living in the academy, but they still have to be back before curfew. It also means intensified classes, both in number and difficulty, and the painstaking preparations for the college aptitude tests that they must take in their final year. With Minseok’s family being what they are, he certainly feels as though he already has a lot on his plate.

Minseok does not need what other people take as the usual trappings of adolescence. Where other boys usually wear their family’s power and prestige on their sleeves, Minseok shucks it away. His parents have taught him to do his best to live up to their family name. He does not need distractions. He doesn’t need to _want_ , he doesn’t need to _have_. More than what he already has, anyway.

Minseok is brought back to earth by the feeling of Lu Han’s arm around his shoulders. “Don’t,” he gripes, taking off the other boy’s arm, “I’m all sweaty.”

Lu Han places his arm back, wrapping it more firmly around Minseok’s shoulders. Minseok takes it off. The other boy merely puts his arm around his shoulders again.

“You’re so annoying,” Minseok laughs. “Go find a new hobby or something.”

“Nah, I’m only ever obsessed with you,” Lu Han says.

Feeling slightly uncertain, Minseok lets him have the moment as he remembers the other night in the library. He thinks that if Lu Han is starting to notice, then he must try harder at making things seem _normal_ between them, or maybe just within himself. Minseok is pretty sure that he is the only one bothered, the only one overthinking every small thing. Even though his heart flutters at the contact, he can let Lu Han have it this time. In the years that they have been friends, Minseok can’t help but realize that it has almost become a veiled game of give and take, with Lu Han an unwitting player, Minseok wondering until how long and how much he can allow Lu Han to get a grip on him, and more than in the physical sense.

He supposes he has done a satisfactory job at playing it off, if Lu Han is still being his friend. But as always with him, beneath the overt playfulness is an undercurrent of fear.

Is he really giving Lu Han the moment, or himself?

With that sobering thought, Minseok freezes for a fraction of a second and quickly asks the other boy, “Are you ready to go back?”

“Just a bit longer,” Lu Han hums. “We’re not going to be late.” But he must have felt Minseok tense up, because not long after he withdraws his arm, gathers their things and stands up.

Together they start walking back to the dorms. This early, with almost no soul about except theirs, Minseok can fully appreciate the beauty of the academy, with its buildings of brick and brownstone, standing baronial in their old-fashioned elegance. Marble arches and curved columns decorate the grounds and cover the red-brick paths, the lawn always perfectly cultivated, never seeing overgrowth. To some, this gilded perfection might be imposing, but to Minseok he has never known anything else, a given fixture in the life carved out for him by the circumstances in which he was born. Before he knows it, he is already in his fourth year of being schooled together with the heirs of noble blood and old-money privilege.

Unlike the banter only a few minutes before, the two friends’ walk back to the dorms is somehow charged with a quiet that is difficult to break. Minseok wonders what Lu Han is thinking; since they left the field the other boy has seemingly disappeared into his own thoughts. Minseok is not about to disturb it, he is prone to enough reflective silences of his own. But when he notices that Lu Han is not walking beside him anymore, he pauses and looks back.

He finds Lu Han a few paces behind him, standing with face turned toward the sky, his blond hair a pale sight in the vivid morning. There is a certain look about him, his doe eyes doleful as he brings his glance back to Minseok.

“Lu Han?”

“I’m fine,” the other boy replies quickly. He looks into Minseok's eyes, a mountain of emotion behind it, and Minseok gets the feeling Lu Han wants him to understand _ something,_ or maybe that Lu Han himself wants to understand. “Sometimes I’m just… tired.”

They return to the dorms and find Yixing already awake and dressed. They go to breakfast and class together, all the while Minseok bothered by the unveiled sadness in Lu Han’s eyes that morning. He figures that Lu Han will tell him about it sooner or later, so he keeps quiet for now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Their teachers somehow muster the mercy to give them less homework for the weekend, allowing them more free time than they usually get. After Sunday Mass, Minseok takes advantage of it and asks Junmyeon to go to town with him to buy a small gift for his sister, who will have her birthday a couple of weeks from now. She will never forgive him if he does not at least send her a letter.

They go into a few shops, a bookstore, a souvenir shop of the town’s products, looking for something suitable to gift a fourteen-year-old. Minseok does not think his sister will strongly appreciate yet another postcard of Jeongseon county, so they go to the music store next door instead.

“Where are Zhang Yixing and Lu Han?” Junmyeon asks.

Minseok does not exactly know why, but Junmyeon has never fully warmed up to his two closest friends. Yixing explained it vaguely once, that Junmyeon saw them making a racket with a ‘project’ or some other matter. Knowing his cousin, Minseok supposes he probably saw Lu Han and Yixing engaging in some innocuous prank when they were younger, and Junmyeon still has not gotten rid of their association with trouble, even though the two are actually harmless. They’re long past the boyhood antics by now, but his cousin, a stickler for the rules, does not often change his opinion about people once it's formed. Minseok still secretly hopes they can be friends, though.

“Yixing said something about having his guitar strings changed, and Lu Han, well, I don't really know where he went, he was being vague.” Minseok shrugs. He has other friends too; he can exist outside their little trio, after all. “Why? Can’t I hang out with my younger cousin anymore?”

Minseok does not let Junmyeon forget that he's still older by a year, even though they're in the same grade. Junmyeon knows that and dismisses the older’s slight teasing. “I’m just wondering where they are, hyung. I’m not going to steal you away from them.”

For that, Junmyeon gets put into an affectionate headlock and is only let go when the cashier glares at them in judgment. They continue to browse the records, finally choosing an album of a singer that Minseok remembers his sister likes. Junmyeon persuades him to let him share the gift (“We’re still students, we’re poor”), and Minseok relents, promising he will include him in his letter.

They pass the afternoon like that, hanging out and eating snacks they don’t usually have at the school, even watching a baseball game at a television shop and chatting up the _ahjussi_ manning the place until it’s time to go back to campus for dinner.

Minseok finds Yixing in their dorm room, strumming away with the new strings on his guitar, and Yixing happily remarks that it feels better for his fingers. When Minseok asks where Lu Han is, Yixing gets visibly shifty. “I don't know. He didn’t say.”

They trudge towards the dining hall together, meeting Junmyeon who’s waiting for his older cousin just outside the doors. The three of them eat together, Yixing making stilted conversation with his cousin. When Yixing turns away for a bit, Minseok looks at Junmyeon as if to say, _Please_ _play nice_ , and Junmyeon looks appropriately rebuked for a moment. The conversation flows more naturally after that, though worry for Lu Han still gnaws at the back of Minseok's mind.

“We have class tomorrow. Where can he be?” Minseok asks, apprehension growing stronger.

“I’m sure he's fine,” Yixing says, but his voice is uncertain. “He’ll probably be back after dinner.”

But  Lu Han still isn’t back after dinner, nor at lights-out.

“He's in trouble now,” Yixing mumbles ruefully in the dark. “Well, hopefully not of the dangerous kind but… He’s missed curfew.”

Eventually Minseok hears Yixing’s soft, even breathing and knows that he has fallen asleep. Minseok stays up for a while, staring at the silhouette of Lu Han’s empty bed, wondering what could have happened to his friend to make him stay out this late. He tries to fall asleep as well, because trouble or no trouble, they have class in the morning.

Minseok is awakened sometime in the night by a hand on his arm and a voice calling his name. He squints and becomes vaguely aware that the curtains have been opened halfway, moonlight bleeding into their dark bedroom.

“Lu Han?” Minseok mumbles, groggy. Lu Han is sitting on the edge of his bed beside him, looking at him, his face half in shadow. “What happened to you?” He tries to sit up, but Lu Han puts a firm hand on his shoulders and pushes him back down.

Minseok's heart stops. “Lu Han?” he tries again. There is something very wrong in this situation, he thinks.

The other boy starts to lean down towards him, ever so slowly, and Minseok sees that Lu Han’s eyes are like molten fire, burning, flowing, threatening to flood the precipice Minseok feels he’s standing in, and he has nowhere to go. He sees Lu Han glance at his mouth. It belatedly occurs to Minseok that Lu Han is about to kiss him, and he feels paralyzed. He is close enough that Minseok can smell alcohol on his breath, and in the split second before their lips touch, his brain catches up, he realizes what precisely is wrong, that Lu Han must be drunk—he turns his head in shock.

Lu Han’s lips land on his cheek, at the corner of his mouth. Minseok does not know what to focus on: what Lu Han just tried to do, the warmth of his breath on his cheek, the soft brush of his lips. His best friend, realizing what happened, laughs lightly against his skin, the sound more than a little mournful. There is a shortage of air in Minseok's lungs at the moment.

“When I say I’m tired, I’m really tired of pretending,” Lu Han breathes against his cheek. “Sometimes I wish I could get away and take you with me.”

Minseok’s insides lurch and something sinks low and heavy in his gut at the words. He sharply exhales the breath he doesn’t realize he’s holding, yet he doesn’t dare move.

“But how… when you don’t… you’ve never…” Lu Han trails off. He sighs once, his body further sinking into the mattress, mouth dangerously close to Minseok's neck. After a few soundless seconds, Minseok realizes the other boy has slipped into unconsciousness, half laying on top of him.

Minseok’s heart continues to hammer away as though it’s trying to beat out of his chest. He turns to look at Lu Han and ascertains that he is now indeed asleep. Putting aside his panic, he stops to think about what to do. He slowly extricates himself from the other boy’s embrace and gets to his feet. Sparing a glance at Yixing, who seems to be deep in slumber, he carefully places Lu Han’s legs onto the bed and covers him with his own blanket. He closes the curtains and then staggers towards Lu Han’s bed, where he curls up like a small child.

The room is once again plunged into relative darkness, but still, Lu Han’s sleeping form in _his_ bed arrests  Minseok’s adjusting sight. He can still feel the ghost of a kiss at the corner of his mouth, can still smell the awful bitterness of cheap alcohol that tinged his friend’s breath. His mind is teeming with questions, self-assurance one moment transforming into doubt the next. His friend is drunk, apparently drunk enough to have his usual sense fly out of his head and try to kiss _him_. Perhaps that is the problem, that he got drunk enough to try something Minseok figures would never occur to his friend’s mind in sobriety.  Or maybe it is not even about Lu Han getting drunk so much as Minseok drowning in confusion at what those precise actions would mean if his friend had _not_ been under the influence. What could he have meant by it? What was Lu Han trying to say? _Minseok doesn't what?_ _ He's never what?_

With the same, tumultuous thoughts running endlessly through his mind, Minseok eventually slips into sleep, awash in the smell of Lu Han lingering in the sheets.

 

 

 

After a fitful night of sleep, Minseok wakes the next morning, eyes immediately drawn to the figure still slumbering in his bed. It feels very much like the morning when he had that dream, except last night was very real, the realest evidence of which is his waking up in his friend’s bed instead of his own. Yixing wakes a few minutes later, understandably confused as to why Lu Han is sleeping in Minseok’s bed. When he turns to the older boy with the unspoken question in his eyes, Minseok merely shakes his head.

Minding that Lu Han will probably have a hangover, Minseok tells Yixing to not wake him and get dressed as they usually do. He makes it a point to leave a glass of water for him on his nightstand, in any case. At breakfast, in hushed tones, Minseok explains to Yixing that Lu Han came home drunk last night then fell asleep on his bed, leaving out all other details.

Looking around, Minseok notices that their teachers seem especially perturbed and stern that morning. They are called to gather for the morning assembly, and the headmaster, wearing an austere expression, strides towards the stage and stands at the lectern. He then proceeds to inform the student body that last night a group of upperclassmen were caught drinking in the woods on the other side of town. The phrases _disgraceful behavior_ and _unbecoming of students of this titled school_ are thrown around, increasing Minseok’s distress. The headmaster says that the involved students  will be penalized accordingly and warns the rest against engaging in such tomfoolery, before bidding them all to proceed to class.

Minseok and Yixing look at each other. It’s not hard to piece two and two together; Lu Han had surely gone with the group of upperclassmen. Whether the school particularly knows of Lu Han’s involvement, Minseok cannot be sure yet. The aforementioned rule-breakers were not named.

The day drags on, the two worried about what kind of punishment the incident might mean for their friend. When Minseok meets up with Junmyeon for their chemistry lab, Junmyeon asks in a hushed voice, “Is he one of them?” Minseok sighs, “I guess so.”

Throughout the day they hear rumors and whispers as to the nature and severity of the so-called ‘punishment.’ Someone says the upperclassmen are to be suspended for two weeks, another says they’re likely to get expelled. A boy in their class swears they are to be paddled. “No one uses that anymore,” Junmyeon mutters, an edge to his voice. He looks at Minseok. “Do they?”

When Minseok and Yixing finally return to their dorm after all their classes, they find the room empty, Minseok’s bed neatly made, even though Lu Han did not appear at any of their classes that day. Yixing _tsks_ under his breath. “Just how much trouble did he get into?”

“Yixing, has he told you anything?” Minseok asks the younger boy. “About… I don’t even know. Is he having a hard time? Is it his parents? Why would he drink like that?”

The Lu Han he knows is sometimes childish and mischievous, yes, but he isn’t _reckless_.  And drinking with some upperclassmen while underage, even if they didn’t mean to get caught, is way past _reckless_ for a student at their school.

Yixing does not answer for a few moments, facing the mirror and not meeting his eyes. “He hasn’t told me anything.” He takes off his tie then stares straight at Minseok, gaze piercing. It’s not a hostile look, but it’s _meaningful_. “But I can probably take a guess.”

“What do you mean?”

Before Yixing can answer, the door opens and Lu Han comes into the room; he’s wearing his uniform, neatly pressed, and a sheepish expression. “Hi. How’s it going?” He musters a small smile.

They stand frozen for a moment, then Yixing comes over to stand in front of Lu Han and knocks him up the head. Minseok startles and stares at Yixing in slight awe. “Ow! I still have a bit of a hangover!”

“Serves you right,” Yixing says. “I can’t believe you did that.”

Minseok would have done the same, but he stands rooted to the spot, last night and Lu Han’s words flooding back to him. In his worry for his friend, Minseok has almost forgotten what happened last night, but he cannot suppress it for very long—it’s still at the back of his mind, grating on his skin. He wonders if Lu Han even remembers.

As the two bicker, Lu Han glances at Minseok over Yixing’s shoulder, something uncertain in his gaze. Minseok supposes it’s time for him to speak up. “Did they call you in?” Meaning: _how bad was it?_

Lu Han moves away from the doorway and sits on the bed, _his_ bed. The bed that Minseok slept in last night.

“They had me suspended for the day and gave me two hours of detention on Saturday.”

Minseok raises an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

Lu Han shrugs. “I guess so. What else is there? It’s not so bad, right?”

“What about the other guys?” Yixing asks.

“I guess since they’re older, they received worse penalties. I don’t really know.”

“Seriously, Han, I’m so mad at you,” Yixing seems unwilling to let go of the matter. “You made Minseok and me worry so much.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I knew it was wrong.” Lu Han glances at Minseok. “It was stupid and I’ll never get into trouble like that again.”

Minseok gets the feeling that Lu Han isn’t telling them everything. With the way the headmaster spoke about it that morning, it seems so severe an offense to merit such a light penalty. But he doesn’t know how to bring it up again, so he lets it go for the time being.

The three of them walk towards the dining hall together. A rare occurrence, Junmyeon joins them at dinner to ask whether Lu Han is all right. They make hushed conversation, not wanting anyone to know for sure that Lu Han was involved in the incident, regardless of what rumors might fly about eventually. Afterwards, the four then walk back to their dorms, Minseok still tense and quiet for some reason he can‘t explain to himself.

Before they could get to their dormitory, however, Lu Han pulls Minseok to a stop and gestures at Yixing and Junmyeon to go ahead. “Can I talk to you?” Minseok only nods.

“How come I woke up in your bed this morning?”

Just as he suspects, Lu Han does not remember the night before. It’s not much of a debate how much to tell him. Minseok only hopes his voice remains even. “You came into the room really late and passed out on my bed. You were heavy and I couldn’t move you, so I got up and slept in yours.”

“That’s all I did?” Lu Han asks.

 _You tried to kiss me and I’m scared of what it might mean_. “Yeah, that’s all.” Somewhere in his internal struggle, Minseok conjures up a small smile and hopes it placates his friend well enough.

“Did I… say anything?”

Minseok shakes his head. “You didn’t.” Eager to be rid of the conversation topic, Minseok changes course. “You really worried me, you know.”

“I know, and I’m really sorry. I was just… I don’t know what I thought.”

Minseok does not know how long he can keep lying to his best friend. “You said before that I can tell you anything. That’s also goes for me, okay? I’m here.”

Minseok knows they’re feeble words, half of a lie at worst, because he’s afraid of what Lu Han might say if they are to be honest with each other. But he cannot regret them for the way Lu Han smiles and tells him not to worry anymore.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Something changes in his friendship with Lu Han.

Lu Han never hugs him anymore out of the blue, or takes his hand, or finds any random occasion to touch him. Gone are the affectionate nudges, the slight back hugs while playing soccer, the leaning in whenever they do their homework, little things that make Minseok’s heart simultaneously soar and contract. He notices it immediately in the week following ‘the Incident,’ and at first Minseok thinks he’s delusional. But eventually he cannot deny it; it’s there, a highlighted negative space where there used to be practiced ease, a growing absence so disorienting it almost makes itself known as a presence.

Lu Han still smiles at him, laughs at and with him, discusses homework with him, goes on runs and plays soccer with him. But he doesn’t find excuses to touch him anymore. Minseok comes to the conclusion that it’s a maturity of some kind, but he also can’t help but feel that the cessation of the usual physical contact between them might spell some kind of emotional distance. After years of clinginess from his best friend, the lack of oft physical contact from him is derailing.

At times, Minseok looks at his friend and sees his hand reaching out to him, but then as if remembering something, he retracts it and passes off the movement as something casual, or punching Yixing lightly in the shoulder. Even when it’s Minseok who leans into his space, Lu Han seems quick to break the spell. Minseok tries to ignore how it stings like a freshly-opened wound every time.

The metaphor of give-and-take does not work anymore, not when Lu Han seems to be unwilling to _take_. He does not understand why it even matters; it’s just physical contact. Minseok cannot fault him for growing up. _Maybe that's all it is._

Still, it breaks his heart for no reason.

Their old lie of _You_ _can tell me anything_ has morphed into _Please say something_ —or on Minseok’s part, at least.

They part for the winter holidays, Minseok feeling strangely bereft, as if his heart has caved in on itself.

 

 

 

Minseok’s family welcomes him back warmly at home.

After Christmas, his father has to travel to Beijing for some other political meeting or other, and the whole family goes as well. His mother is thrilled to turn his father’s official trip into something of a mini-vacation, and she goes to make plans right away. It’s not a new thing for the family to go with his father on some of his trips abroad, but it _is_ Minseok’s first time in Beijing. He tries not to think about his desire to see Lu Han, even though he knows the mere possibility of it is a long shot.

Minseok, his mother and his sister sightsee around the city while their father has to sit in political conferences and meetings. Minseok ends up having a lot of fun; being a high school student, his time for any kind of enjoyment has significantly been cut down in favor for keeping up with his studies. His sister is especially enthusiastic about eating authentic Chinese cuisine and her favorite mapo tofu, saying it’s unlike any she has ever eaten before. They enjoy the trip, even though it's just the three of them who can go out. Even though he keeps lingering, looking over his shoulder for a blond head and a familiar, angelic face everywhere he goes, irrational as that may seem to be.

After six days in Beijing, Minseok gathers enough courage to call Lu Han using one of the phones in the hotel lobby. He can’t seem to bring himself to do it while in their family’s suite, even though his mother knows of his school friends. He has the number written in his address book, below another number with the area code of Seoul. He has called that number a few times before during breaks, but for some reason, as close as they are, they never seem to figure out how to communicate with each other when it’s not face to face. _I think we're bad at this_, Lu Han admitted out loud once, and Minseok just laughed, _I don't mind. I’ll see you in a week_.

The phone gets picked up by someone who’s probably a household staff and Minseok introduces himself. He gets put on hold while the phone is passed to Lu Han.

The surprise is evident in Lu Han's voice. “Hello? Minseok?”

“Hello, Lu Han,” he says. “How are you?”

After the cursory pleasantries and catching up, Minseok mentions that his family is staying in Beijing for two weeks because of his father’s work, and he also tells Lu Han the name of their hotel. The Chinese boy hums and keeps silent on the other end of the line for a few moments, seemingly taking in the information. Lu Han then asks him about the places he’s been to, and they talk about his sightseeing experiences for a bit before they both trail off, Minseok hesitant to break the pause. Against his better judgment, he internally wonders if Lu Han has the time to go see him. But Lu Han just asks about homework the next moment, and the rest of the conversation passes without harm.

After about twenty minutes of talking, Minseok can sense the stirrings of urgency in Lu Han’s voice. “I'm sorry, but I have to go. I'm glad you called. I,” Lu Han hesitates. “I've missed you.”

Minseok startles slightly at the admission. It’s not the first time his friend has told him the words, but in that moment, they have Minseok’s breath catching. Did he just imagine the distance of the past month?

In the end he decides to be honest, both to the other boy and to himself. He tries to speak as casually as he can manage, which is probably a moot point for how long it takes him to reply. “I've missed you too.”

They lapse into silence while Minseok feels the weight of the words travel down the line, wondering what Lu Han is thinking. A silence that’s broken by Lu Han huffing in laughter before saying goodbye.

So  it seems that Lu Han does not have time to see him, because they don’t end up seeing each other for the rest of Minseok’s stay. Nor does he call him another time, because he supposes their friendship has always been like that, thriving better when they’re together, as if any kind of separation is easily surmountable with each other’s physical presence. Minseok tries to tell himself they don’t have to talk often on the phone to be good friends, just as it has been before.

On their last night in Beijing, a hotel staff delivers a neatly wrapped box to Minseok’s family’s suite. The outside does not bear any clues as to its sender. Minseok opens it gently, matching the meticulous care with which it must have been wrapped. Inside he finds a knit scarf, thick and warm and deep blue. From within its folds a plain white card nestles, bearing a familiar handwriting.

_Your_ _late Christmas present. Love, Lu Han._

Minseok has not even thought to get him anything. He strangely feels like wanting to cry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He remembers how Lu Han looked like a cherubim angel when he saw him that first day, face unlined in early adolescence and hair shining like a halo in the sunlight, and how, even when he has gotten to know his mischievous side, he has never quite managed to change his opinion of him as an angelic creature, a deity even, a little too enigmatic and untouchable in the way ethereal beings are. 

He remembers Lu Han smiling, laughing with that funny-looking expression of his, latching onto him in every way possible early in their friendship, sometimes not even letting him out of his sight. He remembers Lu Han calling him _baozi_ , remembers Lu Han dragging him to any and every shared activity just so they could do things together. He remembers how he let Lu Han get what he wanted, because he always seemed like he wanted to be with Minseok, even when Minseok himself simultaneously wanted to linger and flee.

He remembers Lu Han slowly but willingly opening up to him, remembers the barely-noticeable inflection in his voice when he talks about matters that pain him, the practiced look of disinterest he sometimes adopts when things start to faze him and he does not want to admit it to anyone, not yet anyway, until such a time he can poke fun at himself and laugh with Minseok about how he can be so stupid. 

He remembers him staring with those eyes, eyes that seem to light up from the inside, eyes that always seem to beseech him to understand _something_ , eyes that sometimes cannot hide his frustration when Minseok meets _that_ look with obliviousness. He remembers a kiss on the corner of his mouth, words spoken in a drunken haze tinged with several emotions that Minseok is only now having the courage to pick apart. He remembers how Lu Han said he was tired of pretending, how he wanted to take him away, as if he thought he could call Minseok his own if only he would want the same.

He remembers the way his heart sings whenever Lu Han touches him, how he feels simultaneously relieved and out of breath when Lu Han pulls away. He remembers how infectious Lu Han’s laugh can be, and marvels at how wonderful it must feel to be the reason behind it. He realizes that the heavy burden on his shoulders still cannot outweigh how buoyant he feels in the other’s presence. He realizes how much he wants Lu Han to look at him only, and realizes that the way Lu Han has beguiled him, ever since the first day, might be more than a mere friendly fascination.

 _Love, Lu Han_.

Minseok is tired of weaving everything through logic. He lays out all the memories in his mind, side by side, sees them for what they must be, what they _are_. He remembers, he _feels,_ and then he realizes. In the cold of winter, when things that look alive go to sleep, Minseok’s heart awakes.

For the first time, he lets himself acknowledge the possibility that he might not be alone in his deifying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In January, Minseok returns to school and even colder weather. The downpours turn into snowstorms, the gusty winds creating eddies of fallen leaves turn into blustery drafts carrying flurries of snow. The ground starts to accumulate a thin layer of frost that eventually thickens as they move deeper into winter. Students hurry to and from class, covered in multiple layers of thick clothing.

Since the thought that Lu Han might have feelings for him took root in his mind, the more Minseok realizes that he might have been so, so stupid. After that night Lu Han got drunk, a part of him—the part that was always afraid—has kept wishing his friend would take it back, undo it, make it right somehow. Only now does he realize that maybe he’s the one who should be making it right.

He badly wants to talk to Lu Han and finally take him up on his words, _You_ _can tell me anything_ , so that it doesn’t have to be a lie, or a veiled truth, on Minseok’s part anymore, and maybe Lu Han’s too. It’s not as if his fear is suddenly gone or that he feels ready to face it, but a feeling of _rightness_ that he has never felt before now grips him, compels him to break down his barriers for once and _go_ , urges him to end some of the turmoil that has probably been going on longer than he let himself acknowledge, both in him and his friend.

On the surface, though, their friendship is still the same as ever, especially when Yixing is around. Eat together, go to class together, do homework together—rinse and repeat. They are inevitably kept indoors by the weather, a boon for their studies, which is picking back up in intensity as they slip into the second half of the academic year. Lu Han and Minseok have no choice but to do their runs and one-on-one games of soccer inside the gymnasium, in the late morning on Saturdays when it’s slightly less cold, just as they had in the past winters. They are never as satisfying as being outside in the sun, but they do alleviate the boys’ need to move around and have time for themselves.

They have just finished washing up in the showers and getting dressed, Minseok once again wrapping the scarf that Lu Han gifted him around his neck. It is the first time he’s worn it in front of his friend; when Lu Han saw it when they went out, he did a double take and grinned. The mantra of _tell him tell him tell him_ has been thrumming through him for the past week, mimicking the tempo of his heartbeat whenever the two of them have a moment alone. Descending into a companionable silence, they leave the gymnasium together to return for lunch, Minseok’s exhale clouding in the frigid air. Weak sunlight presses against the earth, making the frost melt and the grass damp. Wearing fingerless gloves, Minseok rubs his hands together and exhales into them. Perhaps from sweating, then taking a warm shower, then venturing out again into the cold, Minseok’s nose starts running.

 _What good timing_ , he rues to himself and sniffles slightly. He glances sideways at Lu Han, and finds the taller boy staring back at him, particularly at the way he rubs his hands together.

“Should I have given you a pair of gloves too?” Lu Han says with a smile, eyebrows raised.

Should he take it as a good sign that Lu Han is being cheeky again? “Shut up,” Minseok merely rolls his eyes and laughs. _Tell him tell him tell him._

They walk a bit further ahead until Lu Han’s demeanor turns slightly serious. “It looks good on you,” he says in a voice that Minseok would say small if he didn’t know Lu Han better.

Minseok’s gut swoops at the words, feels certain that his ears have turned pink. _Tell him tell him tell him._ “Thanks to you,” Minseok musters a smile.

They take their usual shortcut off the paved path, behind the gym and between the storage sheds, to get back to the dorms more quickly and keep under the shade of the buildings. Tension crackles in the air, perceptible perhaps only to Minseok, as they step across the damp grass. The sun climbs higher in the sky, slowly burning off the precipitate still clinging to the ground and grass from the frosty morning, making brilliant pinpricks of light hit his eyes. He glances at Lu Han, marveling at the way his own blond hair seem to glow on its own. _Tell him tell him tell him._

Not being entirely logical in his life for once, Minseok caves and decides to throw caution to the wind.

He pulls Lu Han to a stop by his arm, then pulls him aside, backing him against the wall behind the gym with an almost possessed courage he didn’t know he had, his grip firm to hide how his hand shakes. He looks into Lu Han’s eyes, running through all the words in his mind that the wants to say, trying to decide which will best get his feelings across, to finally show _himself,_ even as his heart jumps to his throat for what he’s about to do.

Lu Han stares at him, surprise etched in his beautiful, angelic features. “What—?”

There is only one way to go, then. Minseok surges forward, fitting his lips to Lu Han’s own, effectively halting his words. It is a gentle but firm contact; he has never done this before, and he can’t help but think he’s doing it wrong, the other boy’s lips unmoving against his as they both stand frozen in shock, the taller boy with his eyes wide open and staring back into his own. Before Minseok can act on his internal panic and pull away, Lu Han parts his lips slightly, and Minseok hears an almost sigh of relief escape his mouth, which he swallows as he allows his own eyes to close, their lips moving more freely against each other, at first halting and then fumbling, their noses bumping.

It’s  clumsy and quite surely shows Minseok’s inexperience, but he cannot regret the kiss for the way Lu Han chases his lips when he tries to pull back, taking ahold of the back of his head, seemingly unwilling to let him go. Minseok goes by blind instinct, brushing his lips against the other boy’s again, even as his heart flutters like a hummingbird in his chest. Lu Han’s hand moves to cup his cheek, as if he’s something precious, fragile. His heartbeat stutters out of rhythm at the tender gesture.

After a few moments, they break apart, both of their chests heaving, as though they ran a marathon when it could not have been even a minute. Minseok’s cheeks feel warm as he stares into the other boy’s eyes. He has almost forgotten that his nose is slightly running, and he sniffles, the sound strangely comical and mildly embarrassing in the pause that descends on them. Lu Han _giggles_ in response, unveiled elation lighting up his features, as if he cannot believe _Minseok_ has just kissed _him_ for the first time with his nose running from the cold. Minseok  can’t believe it either.

He has to break the eye contact to steel himself to say the words that have been buzzing in him since they reunited for the year. It was Minseok’s heart that was pulsing with _tell him tell him tell him,_ but it seems  it’s Lu Han who finds his words first.

“I lied,” he blurts. “I didn't forget what happened that night.”

Minseok looks up at once, the admission making his breath catch.

“I was drunk but I didn’t forget anything.” Lu Han swallows, a multitude of emotions swirling in his eyes. “But when I asked you about it, you said nothing happened. I knew I must have scared you or confused you enough to lie about it. I don’t regret it, but that night made me realize that no matter what I think your feelings might be, you might never ever act on them.”

From the way he’s talking, it seems that Lu Han has known about his feelings before Minseok himself knew what they meant. Before he can open his mouth to respond, the taller boy continues.

“So I resolved to be just your friend, to stop pushing your boundaries and not want more than what I already have.” Lu Han exhales, his breath clouding in the air. “I thought I could do it, but I’ve always, always wanted you. I think you feel the same. And I understand more than anyone why you’ve been so afraid.”

Minseok takes a shaky breath, his mind still trying to process what Lu Han has just said. He feels both liberated and burdened, finally being honest with his feelings for Lu Han but having it confirmed that he has unintentionally hurt the other boy.

Lu Han brings his gloved hands up to Minseok’s face, his touch tender but burning. “I want to tell you that it’s okay if you’re still afraid. I am too, but I think we can figure it out together.”

“I’m—” Minseok falters. In that moment, he steels himself, tries to block out what is right or reasonable in the eyes of other people. He remembers, he feels, and though he still has a great deal of fear, he willingly jumps into what his life will now throw his way. A bravery new and unfamiliar to him spurs his next words. “Yes. Okay.”

Lu Han looks as if he can’t quite believe his ears. “Okay?”

“I’m sorry that I lied too,” Minseok mumbles. It’s difficult for him to say the words when he has pushed them down for so long, but he owes it to Lu Han. “I’m sorry for being so stupid, for not recognizing sooner my feelings and yours, for what they are.

“I was really confused by what you did that night,” Minseok says, now unwavering in their eye contact. “When it seemed that you forgot, I thought it was my chance to not have to deal with it. I wanted to keep what I feel to myself, just as I always have. But you have probably been keeping it to yourself longer. You don’t have to, now.”

Lu Han takes both of Minseok’s hands in his, the latter’s exposed fingers pink in the cold. The taller boy looks into Minseok’s eyes searchingly for a moment, as if seeking permission, then brings them up and brushes his lips against his small fingers, slowly, one by one. His heart leaps miles at the sweet, tender gesture that he cannot fathom how this can ever be conceived as _wrong._

“Thank you,” Lu Han whispers, almost reverently.

Understanding dawns on the both of them. Minseok now knows that Lu Han has seen through what he feels probably far better than he has allowed himself to contemplate them, so he hopes the unsaid words will reach him as well. It is by no means all that they need to talk about, but it will come another time. Another time to lay it all out in the open, another time to own up to even a quarter of the feeling they both hold for each other. It occurs to Minseok that they have more chances now—to want, to love, to _be_ —that now they _can._

But  for the moment there is Lu Han pulling back, adjusting the scarf around Minseok’s neck that got slightly disheveled from their kisses. The taller boy pats it back into place, raises it ridiculously high up, covering half of Minseok’s face and especially his kiss-tender mouth as if Lu Han  can’t bear to look at it for a second without doing something. Minseok thinks his face must be completely red by now. Lu Han keeps grinning, his laughing face so infectious, and he relents on the teasing to pull back the scarf just enough to uncover Minseok’s mouth, to which he presses a last quick kiss.

“It really does look good on you,” Lu Han says. His eyes rove over Minseok’s face, a hint of his usual cheekiness joining the emotions he now recognizes behind his eyes. “I have good taste.”

 

 

 

The change from their friendship to—what they are now—goes surprisingly smooth that Minseok is almost mad at himself for having been so taken by fear.

When they return to meet Yixing that day, he takes one look at Lu Han’s grinning, twitterpated expression and at Minseok’s burning face and mutters, “Finally.” Lu Han punches Yixing lightly on the shoulder, while Minseok can only think, _What_ _?_ He then gets the feeling of wanting to hide from the other Chinese boy, who might actually be a clairvoyant. Did everyone understand before he did?

The dismal, frosty weather does not deter some of the students from bundling up and braving the cold to have fun. Some days the three friends find themselves on the sports field, a sea of white blanketing the expanse up to their shins, green nowhere in sight. Multiple snowball fights break out, teenage boys rough-housing one another as they take a well-deserved respite from studying.

The three start a snowball war of their own, even though Minseok gets cold easily. It brings out his competitive side, unabashedly throwing snowballs at his friends and doing his utmost to avoid their efforts to get back at him. Sometimes Junmyeon even joins in their escapades.

Minseok shoves a handful of snow down Yixing’s neck while attempting to dodge an icy projectile from Lu Han. It hits the younger Chinese boy right in the middle of his chest instead, Minseok cackling, Lu Han putting his hands together and shouting, “Sorry! That wasn't for you, Xing!”

One day, Lu Han wears a thick knit scarf that looks exactly like the one he gifted Minseok, only in scarlet. A bit stupidly, the older boy has to ask if it’s actually the same as his gift. The smug look on Lu Han’s face confirms his suspicion.

“So you… actually, you… you bought us couple items?”

Lu Han’s expression is not in the least bit apologetic. “I wasn't planning on letting you find out about it until I got to confess.”

Minseok buries his face in his hands, laughing, because Lu Han like this can be so embarrassing.

Add that to the things Minseok now knows the taller boy is capable of being. While Minseok is still struggling to stand his ground and not to run and hide—not so much from fear as from embarrassment and, well, overwhelming glee—Lu Han manages to profess his affections with a straight face. It seems that the fondness and clinginess that Lu Han showed before as a friend does not even come close to what he can actually manage as a—as a— _boyfriend._ He can be _too much,_ sometimes, but in a good way. Minseok has to admire his tenacity.

Lu Han seems to want to kiss him any and every chance they get, and Minseok still struggles not to feel shy about it. A sudden peck beneath a shadowed archway at night, Minseok pressed against the pillar, Lu Han trying not to giggle at his shock. Two breathless brushes of lips behind the gymnasium again; once after a physical education class, both boys sweaty, and another after one of their soccer games, Minseok succeeding at wiping the smug look off Lu Han’s face after the latter won. Three clumsy presses of mouths in their dorm room while Yixing is out in the showers in the morning, Lu Han doing his best not to linger lest their friend come back into the room and complain about them being so clingy. And several, several liplocks in their secret window nook in the library in between studying, books forgotten beside them, the curtains pulled closed.

Not that Minseok is keeping count. _Maybe_.

Soft, breathy kisses that steal his breath, as well as firm presses of lips that eventually coax his own to part. Minseok cherishes and learns from each of them, until it’s he who musters enough courage to lean towards the taller boy and initiate a kiss, much like the first time.

The first time Lu Han uses tongue, Minseok is so shocked that he breaks away.

“Did you just—?”

“Sorry. Was it too much?” Lu Han has the grace to look contrite this time.

Minseok is quick to assure him. “No! It was just… it just surprised me.” Minseok has to look down at his feet before he can say the next words. “You can do it again, if you want.”

So Lu Han does, with his usual gentleness, covering Minseok's mouth with his own, and then swiping the seam of Minseok’s lips with his tongue. Minseok has to actively remind himself that breathing is a necessity. It still takes his breath away though, letting out a gasp as the other boy's tongue once again meets his own, tentatively exploring until they break apart for breath.

“Good?” Lu Han asks, fire lighting up his eyes.

Minseok nods. And Lu Han does it again.

Currently enveloped as they are in bliss and the freedom to kiss each other away from prying eyes, it is not to say that fear is no longer a constant companion to the both of them. Minseok tries not to think further than the current week, or about home or his parents’ expectations or his duties, which is proving to be a challenge for his naturally meticulous personality. Their classes cannot even be considered a respite, since in some of them Minseok has to sit through almost an hour trying not to hate himself or second-guess his life.

“You know, every time we're in class, and Father Choi goes on his rants about _kids these days,_ I want to cover your ears so you don’t hear the hateful words.”

Lu Han says it lightly but a certain tightness underlies his words. He is referring to their theology class, where more often than not instead of discussing some actual spiritual philosophy, their professor goes on heated diatribes about how the world now lives in sin.

The image of Lu Han, wanting to do something so purely childlike as to cover his ears, futile as that may be, has Minseok simultaneously melting and agonizing inside. Where he used to listen attentively out of duty and the thought of failing, Minseok just blocks out that class, now. He wants to assure Lu Han not to worry about him. He wants to tell him that every kiss makes him bolder, makes his heart sing louder. But Minseok has never been particularly good with words. So he tries to express that feeling in the way he holds the other boy, every scrap of courage he finds within himself fueling his veins.

Eventually the frost on the ground melts away completely, leaves bursting forth again on the branches of trees, the sun peeking out of the clouds for longer periods of time. The multiple layers they wear decrease little by little, the cold becoming more bearable, though Minseok keeps wearing his precious blue scarf. Winter turns into spring, which means Minseok’s birthday (“Please don’t bother, I don’t need anything,” he insists, but he doesn’t say no to the kisses), and then Lu Han’s.

A week before the other boy’s birthday, Minseok secretly goes to town to buy Lu Han a gift. Because Lu Han gave him a present for last Christmas, he thinks it’s now up to him to return the favor. He wanders aimlessly, having no concrete idea what to give him. It occurs to him to try the more expensive part of town, even though he suspects his student’s budget probably won’t manage to buy anything there even if he does find something nice. After looking around and slowly getting frustrated, Minseok goes into a little shop of assorted trinkets tucked into a side street. He looks around, not particularly wanting anything, until his eyes alight on a silver fountain pen in a simple velvet case. According to the sign beside it, a short message can be inscribed on its side. He also sees that it is a bit expensive, but his money can probably cover that much.

 _This is too ridiculous and cheesy. I’m just seventeen, _ Minseok muses to himself an hour later as he walks out of the shop, the wrapped box tucked deep into his backpack.

Lu Han’s birthday falls on a weekend, so they don’t have class. His roommates are sleeping in, but Minseok wakes up before them, showers and gets dressed. He sits on his bed, leaning back against the headboard, pondering how best to give Lu Han his gift. He feels too embarrassed. But he has already bought it, so he figures he might as well go through with it. Should he just leave it somewhere among Lu Han’s things? What will he _say_?

A while later, his two roommates wake up but make no move to get dressed; they usually have late breakfast on weekends anyway. Seeing Minseok already awake, Lu Han gets up from his bed and sits beside him, shoulders touching but at a chaste distance since Yixing is still in the room. The younger Chinese boy brightly greets them a good morning and a happy birthday to Lu Han. At the reminder, Minseok winces slightly. Lu Han glances at him, expectant.

“...What?”

“Oh, nothing really,” Lu Han says sagely.

Minseok takes a deep breath, and then leans over the edge of his bed to root around for the package in his backpack on the floor. He might as well, since it’s a good time as any. He turns back to Lu Han, hiding the box slightly by his side.

“Um, it’s nothing much…” Minseok fights the urge to blush. “I just feel bad for not getting you anything for Christmas.” He practically thrusts the box into Lu Han’s lap. “Happy birthday.”

Lu Han grins in delight and hastily opens the wrapped package, finding the fountain pen inside. “It’s pretty. I love it.” Transparent happiness dancing in his eyes, he takes Minseok’s hand and squeezes it. “Thank you so much.”

“There's a message…” Minseok mumbles, because he can’t let it go unnoticed by the other boy.

Lu Han then takes the pen out of the box, turning it against the morning light. When he reads the inscription that says _My Angel_ on its side, Lu Han gasps and hugs him so tightly that Minseok  can’t breathe.

“Um, should I go?” Yixing cuts in slyly, his dimple showing.

Lu Han quips at Yixing to read the atmosphere and never return, the younger Chinese boy lamenting that he didn’t think he would be treated like this when he befriended the two. He snickers as he wags his eyebrows before going out and closing the door behind him, narrowly missing the pillow that Lu Han hurls in his direction.

“Why would you do that, we’re not even doing anything,” Minseok groans as he plops back down on his bed and tries to smother his face with his pillow. He feels like not emerging from under it until the next year.

“Really? Nothing?” Lu Han’s voice sounds full of mischief.

Minseok pulls down the pillow enough to narrow his eyes at Lu Han. The taller boy gently removes it and sets it aside.

“Well. You haven't brushed your teeth yet, so…”

As soon as the words hit him, Lu Han jumps out of bed, gathers his essentials, and practically flies to the common bathroom down the hall, presumably to do as Minseok says. Minseok’s stomach leaps and he laughs at how Lu Han can be so _ridiculous._ The taller boy comes back into their room in record time, his breath smelling of mint.

When he joins him on the bed again, Minseok allows Lu Han to pepper his face with soft kisses, on his nose, forehead, chin, over his cheeks and his eyes. It’s sweet, but Minseok knows he’s being toyed with, Lu Han taking his time. He tightens his grip on the other’s shoulder as if to say, _get on with it._ Lu Han doesn’t miss the action, pulls back slightly to look into the older boy’s eyes, and Minseok can read the depth of serious affection in it, masked by the outward glee that spurs the taller boy to giggle.

Lu Han then covers Minseok’s mouth with his, softly at first then he deepens the kiss, tongues meeting. Minseok matches his efforts without inhibition for once; it’s his birthday after all. But Lu Han keeps grinning into the kiss, and it’s infectious, and after a few moments they start chuckling, still pressing light kisses to each other’s lips. Minseok also feels like punching him.

As previously established, Lu Han can be a little bit _too much._

 

 

 

As expected, they finish the term with stellar grades and without further incident. On their last night in the dorm before they go home for the summer, Lu Han whines about being apart for two whole months.

“You’re like an octopus,” Minseok pretends to groan as he’s caught in the tight embrace of the taller boy as they sit side by side on his bed, Lu Han’s arms around him and his chin on his shoulder. He doesn’t make a move to escape the other’s affections, though.

“I feel so sorry for Minseok,” Yixing pipes up from his bed, folding his clothes into his own suitcase. Lu Han just rolls his eyes.

Playfulness aside, Minseok quietly assures Lu Han that they’ll see each other in two months. The taller boy promises to talk to him on the phone when he can as well, willing to make the overseas call since he has to return to Beijing. Not for the first time, the Chinese boy wishes that he could just stay with his aunt in Seoul for the summer. Apparently his father called him back home for an important matter.

In the morning, a car arrives to drive Minseok home. Lu Han kisses him chastely one last time before he goes out the door.

Back at home, he spends time with his sister, entertains guests with his mother in lieu of his father who works in the city, attends class under his private tutor, and lives the moments in between waiting for Lu Han to call, which only happens about once every week. Something holds Minseok back from asking what keeps him busy in China, his home life still mostly shrouded in mystery even until now. He tries to keep himself from pining, but he still does so.

Minseok figures that the bubble of happiness he’s been existing in for the past several months has to burst eventually.

One evening at dinner, when his father is home from his work in the city, he is reminded a little too forcefully of the responsibilities he has been trying not to think about since he started a relationship with Lu Han.

“You only have a little more than a year to go before your college aptitude tests,” his father reminds him, in his usual gentle but formal demeanor. “Have you thought about what you would like to do in university?”

Minseok feels dread course through him, and he wills himself to calm. Irrationally, he has to remind himself that his family does _not_ know about him and Lu Han. “Not yet, Father.” By the  way his father is talking, it seems that he already has a position on the matter. So Minseok gathers the courage to ask what he thinks. “What would you suggest?”

“If you were to ask me, I would want you to work in the department with me,” his father continues, wiping his mouth with his napkin. His mother smiles a bit tremulously at the words. “But your mother and I also want you to choose what you want on your own, and support you no matter where you choose to go or what to do, as long as you work hard toward your future.”

Minseok has always been thankful that his parents have never coddled him to the extent of making his life decisions for him, or using their family’s position to make his life easier. Though he has grown up in a rich household, his parents have always made it a point not to spoil him and his sister, and have always encouraged them to work hard and live up to their family name on their own.

The unspoken reminder that he is the first son of the family, a family that is expected to achieve great things befitting their position, sinks onto his shoulders, making them feel leaden. A burdening feeling now swirls in his gut, unrestrained, with him being so far away from the person who has managed to help him be carefree enough to push his duties and fears to the back of his mind in the past months.

Minseok tries not to let the sinking feeling in his stomach show on his face for the rest of the dinner.

Lu Han calls him a few days later, his voice beaming down the line, asking how he is. Minseok replies that not much is up, and it seems that Lu Han has more stories to tell anyway. He talks about meeting up with Yixing in Beijing, where the other Chinese boy got to visit Lu Han’s house for a day. Lu Han says that he wishes Minseok could do the same, and laments that they didn’t get to see each other in Beijing last winter. When Lu Han utters the words _I miss you,_ Minseok has to carry the cordless phone into the privacy of his bedroom before he can say it back.

Eventually, Minseok ends the phone call with masked regret, and all the other phone calls as well that summer, trying his best to hold on to the vestiges of how his heart felt like in the spring, strong and carefree and most of all, _brave._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The autumn of Minseok’s second year in high school brings him windy days, a mountain of schoolwork, and a significantly diminished amount of sleep. Despite the wavering of his heart in the summer, Minseok is determined to make the most out of his time with Lu Han, while being outwardly dutiful to his parents by working hard in his studies. Lu Han, Yixing, and Junmyeon are happy to study with him, though his cousin remains in the dark about the relationship between Minseok and Lu Han.

Much like in the previous term, the two kiss whenever they get a moment alone. Yixing has taken to hanging out with Junmyeon whenever Lu Han shamelessly drops strong hints that he wants him to clear out of their room, and he finds it a good casualty, at least. Minseok and Lu Han go no further than deep kisses and gentle caresses, though a part in Minseok wonders if the other boy wants more. He does not often want to focus on that line of thought, because the sheer _grownupness_ of it threatens to bowl him over.

In September, Lu Han invites him to spend the last day of Chuseok week with him in Seoul.

“I know your family probably have your traditions,” Lu Han says, face already alight with excitement at the idea. “But the holiday is technically done by then, so maybe you can come see me?”

Lu Han looks so eager that Minseok readily promises to ask for his parents’ permission. He also finds the idea of going on a date with Lu Han thrilling, like lifeblood in his veins.

He brings it up with his parents on his first night back home, in his father’s study. His mother starts interrogating him about who he will be with, what he’s going to do, where he’s going. For some reason, Minseok can’t bring himself to say that it’s Lu Han whom he’s going to visit. So he blurts out that he wants to see the city with Junmyeon before they have to go back to school.

“Let him go,” his father says, sitting powerfully at his desk, documents in front of him. He addresses his wife in a sedate tone. “Let them be boys. It will be good for him to get around the city on his own, especially if he’s going to be living there for university.”

The only concession he lets his mother make is that, since Junmyeon’s family will visit them for Chuseok anyway, he will be going with them on their way back to Seoul on Thursday evening next week. Minseok successfully convinces his mother that he can make his way back home using public transport. The idea honestly thrills him; he has never taken it before. He calls Lu Han immediately to tell him the news, and they agree on the time and place for their date. Lu Han whoops in delight before they end the call, and Minseok laughs as he imagines him with his fist up in the air.

The first day of the holiday dawns and Minseok’s relatives arrive at their house for the festivities. Junmyeon’s family comes as well, of course. They are made to wear traditional clothing during the ceremonies, and the family goes to the ancestral graves to pay their respects and leave offerings. Being a well-known household in their hometown, Minseok’s family entertains many guests during the course of the week, receiving gifts from their neighbors and his parents’ colleagues, and his parents make sure to return the favor.

His family, traditional and historied as it is, has actually adopted an interfaith lifestyle; his mother, a Catholic, knows the traditions and her part as the woman of the house she married into, while his father, though schooled in an elite Catholic academy, knows how to keep to the old traditions of their ancestors. Minseok cannot help but admire the way they work together like clockwork, making quite the pair. His mother makes the best _seongpyeong_ _,_ after all.

Much of the week is spent with his large extended family that Minseok barely has the time to divulge his alibi to Junmyeon and ask him to cover for him, until the night his family leaves for Seoul, the night before he’s supposed to meet Lu Han. He explains the situation to his cousin, making the trip sound like nothing but a friendly outing.

His cousin understandably feels guilty for being complicit in a lie, but otherwise acquiesces.

“I don’t even know why you need me to cover for you, hyung,” Junmyeon says. “Why couldn’t you just tell them that you’re going to Lu Han’s? You were never one to lie and sneak around.”

His cousin doesn’t know, _cannot_ know. He tries to downplay the behavior that his cousin finds uncharacteristic of him. “You know my mom, she’s too protective. She didn’t even want me to go to Seoul if I didn’t go with you.”

That evening, he packs two sets of clothes and some money into his backpack, and makes the one-hour trip to Seoul together with Junmyeon’s family in their car, his younger cousin still regarding him with a bit of suspicion. When his aunt asks them what they’re planning to do the next day, Junmyeon looks at him pointedly, refusing to assist him. Minseok ends up saying something about seeing tourist attractions, but he keeps it vague. He sleeps over in their guest room, and before he knows it, it’s Friday morning. He has to keep up his pretense of spending time with his cousin first, and they have breakfast together with Junmyeon’s parents and his older sister, who all turn out to be leaving the house for the day.

“So, you know what to do if my mom calls, okay?” Minseok says as he and Junmyeon stand in the wide driveway after they leave. “Don’t answer it, ask one of the maids to say we’re out or something.”

Junmyeon  shakes his head, but agrees. “Okay, hyung. You’re lucky my parents and older sister aren’t home to bust you. But you owe me one.”

“I’m older, I don’t need to owe you anything,” Minseok says cheekily, but sighs. “I’m kidding. Fine. I’ll get you something. You’re the best.” He pats his cousin's cheek, which causes the younger boy to dodge and move away.

Minseok takes a bus on his own for the first time, to Gwanghwamun Station where Lu Han is supposed to meet him. When he gets off, the sun has climbed higher in the sky, and he sees Lu Han with his noticeable blond hair amidst the crowd, leaning against the bus stop on the other side of the road. Perhaps he is mistaken about which direction Minseok is coming from. Lu Han has not spotted him yet from this distance, and Minseok takes a moment to appreciate the way he’s dressed nicely like this, in a blue button-down, white shirt and jeans, with sunglasses covering his eyes. Minseok has been so used to seeing him in uniform, comfortable clothes, or in sleepwear. He has to admit that Lu Han looks cool. No, _beautiful._

Minseok lets himself think about how much he has missed him over the past week. The thought that he’s meeting Lu Han here, without the knowledge of his parents (or rather, with their misinformation), hits him full force. Is he really doing this? Is he really seventeen, having his cousin cover for his whereabouts while he goes on a proper date for the first time with someone he really adores?

He thinks that the Minseok from a year ago would have scoffed at the circumstances and deemed them impossible. As he stands there, waiting for the lights to change, he wonders where the Minseok who vowed that he didn’t need to be a normal _teenager_ has gone.

He crosses the road and approaches the taller boy.

“Hi,” Minseok greets, feeling strangely shy. Before a compliment can even tumble out of his mouth, Lu Han beats him to it as usual.

“You look really nice,” Lu Han grins at him, putting away the sunglasses in his backpack.

Minseok looks down at himself. He’s wearing a cream-colored sweater vest over a pale pink polo shirt and simple pants. He doesn’t think it’s much, but he says thanks anyway, and tells Lu Han the same.

Minseok agreed to this thinking Lu Han has some kind of plan; after all he was the one to invite him. But it seems that Lu Han is happy enough to be spontaneous and asks Minseok whether there’s a particular place he wants to see, Minseok coming up with nothing as he isn’t a native of the city. Lu Han laughs and jokingly says that he hopes they won’t be bad at this too, and then puts a hand on his shoulder as they walk along the avenue northwards.

Lu Han spots a café and leads him towards it, where they both order iced Americanos. They take a seat by the window, Minseok telling Lu Han about how the government is planning to redesign this area into a memorial or a tourist square; his father mentioned it as a piece of dinner conversation. Distantly, at the back of his mind, Minseok wonders if perhaps he should be more afraid about the possibility of someone recognizing him, but on the surface he knows that they probably look like nothing but two friends on a day out. Minseok quells the urge to hold Lu Han’s hand as he sits enraptured, watching him as he speaks.

They leave the café, taking their unfinished coffees with them. They wander along the road, not particularly aiming to get anywhere, until their feet take them to the walled complex of the Gyeongbokgung, the ancient royal palace of the Joseon dynasty. The place is open to visitors and tourists, so they decide to take a look inside. Some of the old pavilions and bridges are under construction though, the restoration of the destroyed palace well underway. Minseok laments out loud that such beautiful history had to be dismantled during the occupation. Remembering his family, it occurs to him that some of his ancestors may very well have walked these same courtyards from at least a hundred years ago. Minseok has to admit that having this kind of family history bowls him over sometimes.

They wander towards the small lake on the south side of the palace, where there are more people, seemingly of the same mind as them to keep out of the way of the ongoing constructions. The bridge has already been restored decades ago, the beautiful red-painted wood leading down to the pavilion in the middle of the lake. Several people are taking pictures, in pairs or in groups, and Minseok turns to Lu Han, also wishing to preserve a bit of the day in snapshots.

Lu Han feels him looking and their eyes meet. Minseok’s heart throbs at the expression painting the taller boy’s gaze; if he has to describe it, Minseok will say that it looks tender and hungry at the same time.

“I really want to kiss you right now, and it hasn’t even been two hours,” Lu Han whispers to him as they stand on one end of the bridge, the reflection of the pair of them rippling on the surface of the green artificial lake.

Minseok struggles to breathe evenly through his nose. He touches the taller boy’s arm gently to let him know without words how much he wishes the same.

Eventually there is not much else to see, but Minseok hopes that after its restoration, the palace may once again regain its old regality. They leave the walled palace, returning to the bustle of the metropolis after their taste of a historical timeskip. The mountains bordering the north of Seoul can be seen in the distance, looking alive in their yellow, orange, and brown splendor.

They take a short bus ride to Myeongdong when they start to get hungry and Minseok remembers his urge to try street foods, which he usually does not get a lot of opportunities to eat. Minseok asks Lu Han which Korean street foods he has already eaten, and he finds to his slight mirth that the Chinese boy has actually tried more than Minseok has since the former started to live in the city. It does not matter though, as they end up eating a bit of everything, every yard along the street offering them different sights and smells, Minseok feeling delighted and bold that he’s eating the stuff away from the eyes of his mother, who would surely complain of such an unhealthy diet if she knew.

After their totally self-indulgent lunch, the two end up merely strolling down the bustling shopping district, casually looking around at the shops and items being sold as they walk past. A couple of hours pass just like that, the day now spilling into the late afternoon as they think about what to do next. Lu Han suggests going to a _noraebang_ that he knows is located a few blocks away.

“But it’s still a bit early for karaoke,” Minseok reasons as Lu Han pulls him along.

“Don't worry,” the other boy replies, “we're students anyway, so they won’t allow us to stay too late.”

They arrive at the place and Lu Han pays for it, grinning excitedly.

“I went here with my aunt and her friend once,” he shares as they take a seat in the booth that they were shown to. “They got so drunk I had to carry them to the taxi waiting for us outside, it was horrible.” He laughs at the memory, clearly finding it amusing still.

Minseok chuckles with him, but remembers his misgivings. “Um, I don't sing,” he says uncertainly.

“You do, I’ve heard you. You’ll be fine,” Lu Han assures him, taking the book to choose a song. “I’ll do it first and you can go after me. Or you don’t have to sing at all if you don’t want to. You can just look pretty sitting there.”

Minseok is sure that he blushes, and he’s thankful that the blue lighting inside the room masks the way he colors. He orders black bean noodles and cola for each of them as the Chinese boy gears up to sing a song. Minseok has seen Lu Han bright and beaming so many times before, but it’s almost always in school. Here, like this, with only _him_ for company, he  can’t help the way his heart soars at seeing the pure excitement emanate from the other boy.

Lu Han eventually persuades him to sing a song— _just one, okay, for me?_ —and he takes the microphone shyly, trying not to hide his face in the faux leather of the couch in the singing booth. He chooses an upbeat song, without high notes or emotional parts for him to stumble over, and soon enough he’s taken by the rhythm, bouncing slightly in his seat while Lu Han laughs at the apparently cute picture he makes, as he so graciously comments out loud. Minseok even whoops when he finishes the song and gets a high score.

As he goes to pass the microphone back to Lu Han, the Chinese boy suddenly takes his face and covers his mouth with his own. Minseok is taken by surprise, dropping the mic onto the seat between them, as his brain catches up to respond to the contact. Either one or the both of them eventually deepen the kiss, breathing into each other's mouths, tongues wandering, exploring, chasing the taste of the other so close. Lu Han’s teeth nips lightly on Minseok’s bottom lip, and the latter gasps. When they break apart for breath, Lu Han presses another quick, tender kiss to lips.

“You will not believe how much I’ve been wanting to do that all day,” Lu Han breathes, the beat of the karaoke on standby still pulsing in the background.

Minseok almost curses Lu Han’s ability of saying just the right words to make his insides roil in the best possible way.

Lu Han leans in again, kissing the life out of him, the older boy meeting him breath by lost breath. The taller boy’s lips eventually move down to his chin, kissing it tenderly, to the underside of his jaw, then to his neck, making him gasp and hold onto the other’s shirt tightly. He makes no effort to move away, even though this is unfamiliar territory for the both of them, Lu Han continuing to pepper soft, wet kisses on his neck, pulling aside his collar to reach the spot beneath it.

“Um, we probably shouldn't waste the time you paid for…” Minseok’s sense returns enough for him to breathe out the words, voice strained, his torso leant so far back against the seat that he realizes he’s looking up at the ceiling.

“You call this wasting?” Lu Han chuckles, but after a few more kisses he relents with great reluctance and pulls back.

They eat their food and sing some more until their time in the _noraebang_ is up. When they emerge, the streets are already darkening, the last vestiges of sunlight coloring the sky  half dark blue and orange, the city lights slowly coming alive. Lu Han next suggests they rest in a park by the river before Minseok goes home, and they take a bus to get there. By the time they arrive, the sun has completely set. They lie on the grass, laughing, Minseok’s mouth still tender from all the kissing in the _noraebang_ _._ He suspects that Lu Han suggested such a private place on purpose, and he mentions as much out loud.

The Chinese boy clutches his chest in mock hurt. “Why are you so suspicious of me? I feel betrayed.”

Minseok pulls out some grass and hurls them at the boy lying beside him. They laugh, Minseok’s heart feeling light as a feather, and he feels like he can soar.

He thinks about how the day by far has been the most spontaneous, most _teenagery_ thing he has ever done in his life.

 

 

 

A while later, Lu Han turns to him, his expression tinged with reluctance. “Do you have to go back now?”

Minseok is loath to let this day to come to an end. _I don’t want to yet._ “Not really. Why?”

He sees the other boy swallow before speaking. “Would you like to come to my aunt’s house?”

With the hour getting late, Lu Han can only mean that he wants him to stay over. His breath catches at the thought, and he flits away from it quickly, not wanting to examine it too much. But then again, he also finds Lu Han’s family very curious and he wants to meet his aunt, just from the way Lu Han speaks so fondly of her.

Perhaps still buoyed by the bliss that has wrapped their day, Minseok makes a split-second decision. “Yes, okay. But I have to call my cousin first.”

The two find a phone booth and Minseok calls Junmyeon’s home, the Chinese boy waiting outside. He feels immense relief when it’s his cousin himself who answers the phone.

“Hyung, where are you? Are you not coming home?” Junmyeon asks right away when he determines it’s Minseok.

“I’m staying over at Lu Han’s,” Minseok replies, trying not to waver. “Are your parents home? What did you tell them?”

“Yeah, they are,” Junmyeon replies. “I didn’t know what time you were going to get back, so I told them you already went home.”

Minseok breathes a sigh of relief. “That’s good. I’m glad you thought of that.”

Junmyeon  _tsks_ _._ “Don’t get into any more trouble. After  this I’m going to tell them you were calling from your house so they won’t worry. I hope they believe me.”

Minseok lets the slight lecturing from his younger cousin pass. “I won’t. I really owe you. I’ll be safe.” He ends the phone call moments later and exits the booth.

“All good?” Lu Han asks, expectant. Minseok nods. The Chinese boy reaches his hand out, and in the deserted park, Minseok feels brave enough to take it. When they emerge onto the wider street, Minseok has no choice but to let go.

They ride a bus across the river, to the southern part of the city where his aunt’s modest neighborhood is located. The trip does not take long, and all too soon they’re alighting at a bus stop, the yellow fluorescence of the streetlight throwing shadows on the Chinese boy’s face that make him look, well, Minseok has no other word for it but nervous. _Lu Han feels nervous?_

“It’s just up there,” Lu Han says, pointing up a sloping side street lined with apartments and small houses. He leads the way, Minseok keeping up as he ambles after Lu Han up the incline. When the taller boy notices him slightly lagging behind, he turns back and offers his hand out, which Minseok takes. They walk a bit further before Lu Han stops in front of a single-story house with a small gate, and Lu Han pushes it open.

When they enter, Lu Han calls loudly in Mandarin, presumably announcing that he’s home, a female voice from further inside the house answering back. The two boys take off their shoes by the entrance hall and head into the living room, Lu Han asking him to sit on the couch and make himself at home, and then disappearing into what looks to be the kitchen. Minseok observes his surroundings; the house is simple yet possesses a homely atmosphere, bearing what Minseok figures to be the usual things found in a modest home. There are no picture frames anywhere, though. Minseok thinks about how Lu Han lives in this house when he’s in the city, how he has also kind of grown up in it for the past four years, how Lu Han sometimes talks as if he likes this home better than the one he has in China with his parents. Minseok decides that he likes the place.

A few minutes later, Lu Han returns, following behind him a good-looking woman who looks to be in her early thirties. Lu Han introduces his aunt, and Minseok is not sure what he expected, but he realizes that she is actually much younger compared to his image of her in his head. He greets her politely, offering a bow. In an impeccable Korean accent, she then asks them if they have eaten, Minseok answering that he still feels full from the _jjajangmyeon_ they ate earlier. She serves them dumplings anyway, asking them a bit about their day. Minseok sees Lu Han smile secretly to himself at the sight of the dumplings, and it occurs to Minseok that the taller boy is probably remembering his nickname for him.

Afterwards, the two go to Lu Han’s room. Minseok looks around, interested, around the ordinary, slightly bare room containing a bed, a desk and chair, a wardrobe on the other side of the room, and a few other things to be normally found in a high schooler’s room. Minseok carefully sits on the chair, feeling timid. Lu Han keeps chattering, wondering what Yixing could be doing right now in his hometown in Changsha. Minseok excuses himself to go to the bathroom to prepare for bed, and tries not to think about how Lu Han’s room only has a single bed.

When he returns, Lu Han is already dressed for sleep, leaning back against his headboard. For some reason, Minseok can’t meet his eyes, trying to decide where to stay. Lu Han looks up at him and opens his mouth as if to say something, but before he can speak, a knock sounds on the door and Lu Han’s aunt comes into the room, carrying a futon, a pillow and blankets.

“Um, Auntie, what is that for?” Lu Han asks in Korean, presumably for Minseok’s sake.

“What? This is for you,” his aunt replies. Upon seeing his dumbfounded expression, she laughs. “Of course you’re sleeping on the floor! Let Minseok take the bed, okay? He’s our _guest._ ”

The two boys glance at each other. Minseok tries to keep a straight face as Lu Han stammers, “Oh, yeah! I mean, of course.”

Minseok keeps his voice even. “Thank you, Auntie.”

They keep silent as Lu Han’s aunt bids them goodnight and closes the door, leaving Lu Han to lay out the futon on the floor in the middle of his room, beside the bed. Biting his lip to keep from laughing, Minseok gets into the bed and slides under the covers, Lu Han doing the same in his after turning off the overhead light. Only the lamp on Lu Han’s desk is on, washing the room in pale yellow light. They both stare at the ceiling, and eventually Minseok bursts into uncontrollable giggles. “You should have seen the look on your face,” he laughs, touching his fingers to his cheek in embarrassment. “You’re way too honest.”

“I had other plans…” Lu Han mumbles in slight regret.

They lapse into silence, a contemplating one on Minseok’s part. Sleep seems to be the last thing on their minds right now. Minseok has an idea about what the other boy is thinking, if his earlier actions were any indication. He also thinks he might as well get back at him for all the teasing he did throughout the day, Minseok delaying the invitation that he will give anyway. After about ten minutes of feeling Lu Han stare at him from his spot on the floor, he speaks.

“Lu Han? Will you come up here?”

Eagerness painted on his face, the Chinese boy practically throws off his blankets and slides in beside Minseok on the bed. Minseok laughs once more at the look on the other boy’s face. “As I said, your face is way too honest.”

They lie side by side, facing each other, with a respectable distance between them as much as the narrow bed allows. Minseok lays his palm on Lu Han’s hand resting on the bed between them. Lu Han entwines them properly.

“I had a lot of fun today,” Minseok says. “Thank you for inviting me over.”

“Thank you for coming,” Lu Han replies. He brings Minseok’s hand up to his lips and kisses his fingers softly, the action so simple and chaste after everything they have done in the day. “I’m glad your parents allowed you to go. What did you tell them anyway?”

“I told them I was spending the day with Junmyeon,” Minseok mumbles. For some reason, he can't meet Lu Han’s eyes while he says it.

Lu Han tenses slightly, probably taking in the lie that Minseok had to tell in order to make it today. When he lifts his eyes to the other boy, though, the tightness around his eyes is already disappearing, the moment passing, and Lu Han just hums.

Casting about for a different topic to cover up the small moment of awkwardness, Minseok blurts out the first thing that comes into mind. “Your aunt is nice,” Minseok says in a sincere but hushed tone, mindful of the possibility that their voices may carry outside the room. “I didn't realize she’s still kind of young.”

Minseok is not sure if he imagines that Lu Han also looks relieved to be talking about something else. “My aunt is actually a cousin of my mom. As you can notice, she’s not exactly living in privilege like the rest of my family…” Lu Han pauses for a bit, maintains eye contact with him. “She’s a university professor, teaches Chinese literature. She’s been more like an older sister or friend to me than a parental figure, actually. But I’m glad my parents allowed me to live with her while I’m here.”

“She isn’t married?”

Lu Han’s gaze seems to get more intense before he replies. “Well, she… she has a girlfriend.”

Minseok blinks. “Oh.” He does not really know what to say to that revelation. “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah. She moved here when she… you know. It was a long time ago. She got estranged from her parents, but my mom helps her out from time to time. Doesn’t mean she accepts her though.”

It explains a lot, Minseok muses while searching the other boy’s gaze. Why Lu Han seems to be unfazed by the idea of being with Minseok so long as he wanted it too, or at least not as much as Minseok is still struggling with it. Why he feels close to her and sometimes prefers to live in her house. Why he speaks about her fondly, and also with a tinge of protectiveness especially when he talks about her in the context of his _other_ family, namely his parents.

“Does she know about us?”

Lu Han shakes his head. “She doesn’t. But after tonight, she’ll probably see through it.” He looks as if it does not bother him in the least bit. “About that,” Lu Han continues. “Honestly, I’m willing to tell only the people you’re willing to tell. It’s up to you, okay?”

At that, Minseok squeezes Lu Han’s hand, still intertwined with his on top of the bed, to let the other know he is thankful for the words. But he does not want to talk further about it, not now; he finds another important matter curious. Minseok gathers enough courage to finally ask. “What are your parents like?”

Lu Han takes some time to answer. “Both my parents come from very rich families. They married for business, I guess. They both head the family corporation back home.” He seems hesitant to say more.

“You think you’ll inherit all of that, then?”

Lu Han shrugs. “Probably.”

Minseok takes a few moments to contemplate what it might mean for the other boy’s future. Unlike his own parents, do they want Lu Han to go a certain path they want him to take? There’s still so much Minseok does not know about them, and how they might affect Lu Han, several months down the line.

All of a sudden, Lu Han sighs in the relative silence. His expression looks as though he is about to say something important. “Do you remember that incident, when I got drunk that weekend last year?”

Minseok nods, remembering all too vividly the confusion of that time and the following heartbreak when he felt Lu Han try to distance himself.

“I couldn’t tell you, but the reason I got a lighter punishment than those upperclassmen is not because I was the youngest one there.” He sees Lu Han visibly swallow. “I got off with only a day of suspension and detention because of my parents.”

Minseok lets the words sink in. He refrains from speaking though, because he knows the other boy is far from done. He squeezes his hand again in silent encouragement, and the other boy continues.

“My parents are… well, you know they’re influential. But I only recently realized the full extent of it. At school, whatever I do, even if I do get into major trouble, they can’t severely punish or expel me. My parents have this… powerful connection with them that makes the school afraid of angering them.

“It was kind of shitty to realize that even at school,” Minseok slightly startles at how the curse word flows smoothly from the other’s lips, “my parents can control what happens to me. Even though I deserved a heavy penalty for that incident, because I was reckless and stupid, their influence kept me from being penalized too much. I realized how much they can still control what I’ve considered to be my freedom.”

It is not the first time that Lu Han used the word to refer to something in his life. When they were younger, Minseok often thought about how nice it would be, even envied his friend sometimes for it, that he was so young and could already do a lot of things on his own, to _be_ on his own.

“Freedom? What do you mean by that?”

“I’m free to do whatever I want, yeah,” Lu Han answers with a frown, creating lines that scream distress in the space between his eyebrows. “But that comes with, how should I say it? It almost seems like… like a _deal,_ to use a word  they’re familiar with. Play the part of the good son in front of other people, at business dinners and such, play the part of a perfect, powerful family, and I get to do whatever I want wherever I want, as long as it’s out of their sight.” Lu Han exhales sharply. “As long as I come back at once whenever they need me to play the part again.

“But it’s okay, I think I’ve long since accepted that fact,” he continues. “What’s the use of being mad? Since I was old enough to realize what it was, I just… told myself to get the most out of it, and uphold my end of the deal.”

Minseok aches for the boy beside him, for this brilliant, beautiful boy that so effortlessly captured him even from the first day; aches at the thought of him growing up in a family that coexists by way of transactions and conditions, impersonal and cold in nature. He lets go of the other’s hand in favor of caressing his cheek, feeling the soft skin, protectiveness welling up in him. He thinks about how he used to take for granted the other boy’s confidence, his cheer and playfulness, the freedom that he has especially when juxtaposed to his own family’s heavy weight on his shoulders, and realizes once again that he has been so foolish about the boy whom he thought he already knew a lot about.

“Do you still remember that day in the library, when I told you everything I had was only given to me, and that meant I didn’t actually own anything? And you said I should find something to call my own?” Lu Han holds Minseok’s hand on his cheek, the touch somewhat burning, matching the depth of affection that underlies his words. “It’s _you,_ Minseok. I found you on my own, and I love you. Even if everything gets somehow taken away from me, you’re the only one I want to keep.”

Minseok cannot hold back anymore. He raises himself up on an elbow to lean over the other boy, grasps his cheek more firmly, and closes the distance between their mouths. Lu Han does not so much pull him closer as surges up to meet him, matching the sudden, new intensity that has never possessed the way Minseok kissed him before. Minseok deepens the kiss immediately, trying to express without words how much the other boy meant to him, drinking in every wisp of breath that passes his lips. He does not even think; he just sucks on the other boy’s mouth, tongue exploring its warmth, wanting to taste every bit of him he can reach, every bit the other allows.

For once, Lu Han is the one to break the kiss as the need to catch his breath becomes too overpowering, his expression dazed as he looks up at Minseok, chest heaving. After a several seconds of catching his breath, Minseok presses his mouth against Lu Han’s again, and somehow the latter rolls them over by his shoulder, not breaking contact. The taller boy’s lips latch onto his jaw then his neck, alternately pressing and blowing heated kisses onto the exposed skin. Lu Han nips at the skin lightly, and Minseok gasps as his eyes fly open. Lu Han leaves light bites again at the base of his throat and Minseok can’t help but writhe, a gasp rocking his body. His grasp somehow finds the other boy’s hair, feeling the soft strands through his fingers. Lu Han’s lips continue to move down, pulling aside the collar of his shirt, brushing his lips against his clavicles, the top of his chest.

While Lu Han’s lips continue to wander along his skin and his hand grasps Minseok’s shoulder gently, his other hand starts an exploration of its own, first at the hem of Minseok’s sleepshirt, and then when he makes no move to disentangle himself, sliding up under his shirt and along his sides, burning heat in the wake of his fingers. Minseok cannot gauge if the brush of Lu Han’s fingers along his chest is intentional or not, but the moan that arches out from him sure is involuntary. Lu Han shushes him gently, continuing to kiss down his neck. Minseok pulls Lu Han up again so he can kiss his lips as the latter’s hand continue to wander along his sides. When they brush just inside the waistband of his pajamas, intention unmistakable, Minseok pulls back in shock.

“Um, probably not…” Minseok says as gently as he can as short bursts of breath escape his lungs.

“Okay,” Lu Han says a bit shakily, catching his breath. “Okay. Yeah.”

Minseok can clearly see the disappointment etched into the other boy’s face, and his heart sinks a fraction. Lu Han must have read into Minseok’s expression, because he repeats, “ _It’s_ _okay_. I understand.”

Minseok wants get rid of the expression on the other boy’s face, so he pulls him down again to fit his lips against the other’s gently, all their previous urgency now replaced with tenderness. Lu Han’s hand now rests on the bed beside them, the other cupping his cheek as if holding something fragile. After a few quiet moments, Lu Han pulls back again.

“If you’re not—I should probably, um—we should probably stop, because…” Minseok does not miss the way Lu Han almost involuntarily gestures to himself with his chin and winces slightly.

“Oh,” Minseok says in a small voice, realizing. If possible, he feels his cheeks burn even hotter. “ _Oh._ Um, okay.”

Lu Han laughs to himself for a moment, kisses Minseok’s nose sweetly before he practically crawls down from the bed towards the futon, Lu Han immediately piling blankets onto himself. Minseok feels like hiding his face, because, _oh._

He stares at the ceiling and wills himself to calm down, trying to regulate his breathing as subtly as possible. Without looking, he can hear Lu Han still breathing erratically below him. Then Minseok can’t hold back a groan of embarrassment, Lu Han laughing in response. Contrary to a few minutes ago when he was so unrestrained, shyness now hits Minseok full force; he touches his fingers to his cheeks and feels them still warm.

Lu Han clears his throat. “We should go to sleep,” he says. “Good night, Minseok.”

“Good night, Lu Han,” Minseok says, and then remembers. “Oh, and I forgot to say something.”

At the other boy’s sleepy hum as he reaches up to turn off the lamp, Minseok turns his head to glance at him over the edge of the bed. “I love you too.”

Lu Han pauses in surprise and exhales sharply as he turns to Minseok. His answering grin is the last sight Minseok sees, branded into his eyelids, before the room is plunged into darkness and he slips into sleep.

 

 

 

The next morning Minseok wakes before Lu Han does, as usual. He finds himself lying on his right side, facing the direction where Lu Han lies on the futon, still deeply asleep. He notices that the other boy is also lying on his side, facing the direction of the bed. Minseok feels pleased at the implication that they have unconsciously turned towards each other, even in their sleep.

A ray of morning light slips through the curtains, spilling onto the floor beside Lu Han, his blond hair aglow, his shirt skewed, exposing a part of his shoulder. Minseok remembers the dream that he had from what feels like so long ago, the one where his dream-self kissed the other boy’s naked back and shoulders. He remembers Lu Han’s reaction last night, remembers the reason why they had to stop. He blushes again at the implication. Eventually, he also remembers the things Lu Han admitted about his parents. Minseok thinks that, despite Lu Han telling him it does not pain him anymore, there is still a great deal of buried sadness ingrained in him, the casualty of living seventeen years with a family like his.

It has not escaped Minseok that between the two of them, he is the one with a lot more to reconcile with when it comes to their relationship, not the least of which is his own struggle with himself. He thinks about how Lu Han is almost always the first one to protect him, to chase him, to ask of him things that he should not be asking anymore because surely, surely Lu Han must know how much Minseok loves him, _has_ to know how much Minseok allows him to take from him. Looking at the sleeping boy on the floor and knowing the loneliness with which he must have grown up, Minseok vows that he will be the one to protect Lu Han now. He vows to do better.

When the other boy wakes, they go to breakfast with Lu Han’s aunt. Not long after, Minseok has to leave. He makes sure to thank Lu Han’s aunt for letting him sleep over, and she assures him with a smile that he is always welcome in the house. Lu Han goes with him to where the bus that will take him back to his hometown will stop. They wait for it under the shed, pressed close together, preserving their togetherness until the last possible moment. As they see the bus finally rounding the corner, Lu Han steals a quick kiss to his cheek, in broad daylight. Minseok gasps, his instincts getting the better of him, and he looks around. When he determines that no one is paying any attention to them, Minseok turns back to Lu Han just in time to see him school his face back into a smile, the flicker of hurt that passed across his face gone so quickly that Minseok thinks he merely imagined it. Minseok gives him one last smile and a _I’ll see you on Monday_ before he boards the vehicle, takes a seat by the window, his eyes following Lu Han until he is out of sight.

The metropolis eventually gives way to hills and fields as Minseok gets further away from the city. He sits through the one-hour trip lost in his thoughts, wondering whether there will come a day when he and Lu Han can kiss each other without looking over their shoulders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Minseok wonders if it’s possible to reach a peak of happiness in life, that no matter what you do or what comes after it, nothing will ever bring the same kind of elation, nothing will ever compare. He wonders if paradise can only truly come once, and when it passes, you can never go back to it again—that afterwards, everything will only pale in comparison to the vividity that paints this elysian state, warmth and love reaching into the deepest recesses of his bones and soaking them in unbridled joy.

For Minseok, this paradise is not a single memory: it’s a spell that stretches out across multiple moments, carved from private minutes that turn into stolen days, slowly merging into unguarded weeks. He has no idea what will come after and it does bother him, but the bliss that he feels almost blinds him to his fears. He just basks in the other boy’s presence as much as he can, with all the innocence and freedom this pocket of time allows. The present is paradise enough, and the present contains Lu Han: grinning brightly, so alive and exuberant despite his own buried aches.

This is not to say that everything is perfect, though. Stress hangs thick in the air, blow in in by the mountain of work they have to do for school as they near their senior year. Sometimes Minseok manages to forget: forget his fears and doubts, forget his place in society, forget the very real possibility that this might eventually come to an end because he knows they are young and powerless. However, the courage that springs inside him—a torrent on good days, a trickle on bad ones—in Lu Han’s presence pushes all of his misgivings to the background, highlighting instead the simple fact of their togetherness. With every hidden moment the two of them own, bravery little by little fortifies Minseok’s limbs. He looks at Lu Han sometimes, wondering how he once convinced himself that he could exist without _living,_ without knowing how it feels like to love someone so purely and to be loved the same way in return. Such a simple thing, and so very human to do so.

If possible, he falls deeper in love as the seasons change.

He falls deeper as the two of them run across the school grounds after class, their bags lifted over their heads to stave off the wetness of the rain, proving to be futile as they get soaked anyway. Eventually Lu Han just stops and stands under the downpour, Minseok urging him to hurry up, worried about getting sick as they can’t afford to be absent from class. Lu Han just smiles, somewhat watery, the raindrops running down his face like tears, and Minseok looks away with a twinge of sadness the sight brings him. Later on in their dorm, when the first sneeze escapes Lu Han, Minseok cannot help but give him a fond look that says _I told you so_ but reaches up to dry off his hair with a towel anyway.

He falls deeper even when they have to part for the end of the year, Minseok assuring the other that a few weeks won’t be that long. He tries not to dwell on how much he pines as he spends time with his family back at home in winter, almost bogged down by the weight of his secret whenever he goes to dinner with his parents or sits in church with his mother and sister. On New Year’s Eve, Lu Han calls him a few minutes before the new millennium arrives, and he manages to be truthful enough to greet the other boy _Happy_ _new year, I love you_ in the presence of his family, albeit said in a hushed tone masked by their loud merrymaking several meters away.

He falls deeper as they return to school, having less time to mess around outside as their schoolwork inevitably piles up like the snow blanketing the world outside their windows. Minseok is thankful that he continues to study with Lu Han, who eagerly helps him with his Mandarin elective that term, the two of them practicing conversations and accents while Minseok stumbles over the syllables. Lu Han tries to teach him ‘practical’ sentences sometimes (“For when you visit me in the future,” Lu Han winks) and has him repeat a certain string of words that sound different from the ones they usually use. As their meaning catches up to him, Minseok belatedly realizes that the Chinese boy has just made him say _My_ _boyfriend is so handsome and intelligent,_ and barely reins in the urge to elbow him in the ribs.

He falls deeper when one day, Lu Han interrupts their professor’s heated rant in class, his voice dangerously even as he says, “Can’t _they_ love too? Isn’t affection a normal human thing to have?” and he  gets sent out of class for speaking out of turn. Minseok’s heartbeat thumps with equal parts worry and awe. Later, when he meets Lu Han back in their room, Minseok chides him for being so stupidly brave. The taller boy dismisses it and says, “They can’t touch me, remember? Might as well use some of that power.” He squishes Minseok’s cheeks with his hands, and the older boy knows that the playful action is trying to mask the anger that the other must still be feeling.

These are little things that cause Minseok to fall deeper in love and grow more helpless at the same time, given the environment they are growing up in.  Nevertheless, they also make him stronger as they try to carry on with all the eagerness that their youth allows.

Around them, the snow eventually thaws and they both turn eighteen in the spring, warmth creeping back into their surroundings as the shadows grow longer and slink away from the sun. Between the two of them though, the radiance never really left.

 

 

 

Their one last piece of paradise comes in the form of a smuggled moment.

The weekend before their finals—the two of them sick of homework and too much studying—Lu Han gets the crazy idea of taking a short trip to the coast a few towns away from their school. He promises Minseok that they’ll be back to campus before the day ends and that it won’t hurt their grades to do so. Minseok really can’t say no to the other’s pretty deer-like eyes, excitement lighting up his face at the idea. This is not even the first time Lu Han has had wacky ideas spontaneously pop up in his head. There was that time when they were younger, he started a competition with Yixing on which of them could fit the most number of marshmallows in their mouth (Yixing won). Another time when they were downtown one weekend, he ‘borrowed’ someone’s bike so he and Minseok could return to school in time for curfew (he returned it secretly the next day). Really, Minseok should be used to the other’s endearing whimsy by now.

As they prepare their things to go out (Minseok slips a notebook into his backpack, still intending to squeeze in a bit of studying), he tries to invite Yixing along, but the younger Chinese boy declines with a smile, saying he doesn’t have any desire to witness him and Lu Han being mushy together. Yixing says he’s supposed to study with Junmyeon, anyway.

Feeling a bit wild and giddy, Minseok and Lu Han take a train to the nearest seaside town and find themselves on the beach. Though the sky burns bright blue, the breeze coming in from the sea is still a bit cold. It does not deter them from taking off their shoes and rolling the hems of their pants up to their shins, taking turns to threaten and push each other into the chilly water, the sand clumping between their toes. Minseok muses that this wide expanse of blue sea feels very similar to the emotions inside of him: depths unknown and as every bit exhilarating as they are terrifying. There are only few people sharing the beach with them and the two keep to themselves, later sitting up on the dunes to evade the crashing waves, chatting about everything and anything. Lu Han adopts that look on his face that usually means he wants to kiss Minseok, the older boy doing his best not to cave in.

As the afternoon wears on, Lu Han insists on delaying their departure, reluctant to go back and break the spell. Eventually Minseok is persuaded to stay as night falls.

They end up renting a room in a nearby youth hostel where they also acquire dinner. The _ahjumma_ who owns the place shows them to a room with two separate futons, fussing over the two boys and cooing about how she  doesn’t often get guests as good-looking as the two of them. It seems she is especially charmed by Minseok. When she finally leaves them alone, Lu Han laughs at his natural ability to captivate old ladies as they push the two thin but comfortable mattresses closer together, creating one bed.

It’s  not until they have slid into bed that Minseok realizes he hasn’t brought a change of clothes, though Luhan seems unfazed by it; he suspects that the trip is another one of his schemes to get him alone—not that he is complaining. They settle in, propped up on the pillows side by side. Before Minseok can even take out the notebook he brought so he could study for a bit, Lu Han leans over him and softly covers his mouth with his own.

At first their kisses are languid, and Minseok meets every one of them with the same muted passion that Lu Han displays, easing Minseok into every emotion that the other pours into each press of mouths. When the Chinese boy gently sinks his teeth into Minseok’s bottom lip, it causes his breath to catch. Minseok’s hands shoot to the taller boy’s shoulder and hair, while his tongue tentatively reaches up to taste the other; instantly Lu Han takes it into his mouth, plunging Minseok’s head into a flustered daze, intensifying the not-so-unwelcome lack of air in his lungs.

Lu Han’s lips cascade down to Minseok’s neck, alternately nipping and lathering wet kisses against the skin while his hands rove all over him, wandering from his cheeks to his sides and his stomach then creeping under his shirt. Lu Han glances up hungrily to ask for his permission, getting an ardent nod in response before he pushes Minseok’s shirt up to his chin and bares his chest. Already winded at the thought of what Lu Han wants to do, Minseok feels as if his heart has been thrown into the middle of a raging hurricane. A gasp escapes him as Lu Han leaves a smattering of kisses all over his chest, feathery touches that skirt around where he wants the other’s lips to be. Minseok gets the feeling that Lu Han is toying with him again so he tightens his grip on the other’s shoulder, silently demanding him to do something more. The Chinese boy relents and his mouth brushes against one nipple lightly at first, and then covers the sensitive nub more firmly. Minseok can’t help the way he writhes.

This time, when Lu Han moves to take off his shirt, Minseok doesn’t startle; he makes no move to stop him, a feeling of _readiness_ leaving his body pliant and throbbing with want. Lu Han stares into his eyes, alight with both tenderness and desire, smiling softly even through his labored breaths.

“Are you sure?” he then asks, voice hushed and strained.

Minseok does not have to think for long this time. “Yes,” he breathes, suddenly emboldened in this hidden moment that he cannot help but consider a gift, hidden away in a nowhere they have carved out for themselves. Minseok’s shirt fully comes off his body, as do his pants, and then the rest of the world falls away, nothing but him and Lu Han in this stolen instant. Minseok smiles, assuring perhaps both himself and the other that it’s okay to go further than they’ve dared tread before. Once he is divested of all his clothing, Lu Han does the same.

The Chinese boy makes sure to kiss every inch of skin bared to his mouth, offered to his hands, pressing all kinds of praises _beautiful lovely wonderful_ against his skin. Minseok cannot describe the attention the other lavishes him in as anything other than worship, pure and reverent as Lu Han slowly makes his way down his body. He kisses lovingly along his ribs, breathes hotly over his navel, licks gently across his hipbones. When the taller boy finally takes him into the heat of his mouth, swallowing him whole, he gasps both from the pleasure and from the love that thrums through him like a raging flood. His fingers sift through the pale strands of Lu Han’s hair, encouraging him without words. Minseok tries to muffle his moans with his other hand clamped over his mouth, eyes shut tight as he  doesn’t think he can focus on anything other than the heat that so gloriously engulfs him. As the pressure mounts up in him and carries him to his peak, Minseok tenses for a long moment and lets out a choked moan, Lu Han taking in every last bit of his release. His heart thumps erratically in his chest, winding down as the other boy strokes his thighs softly to ease him through it.

Afterwards, they lie side by side facing each other under the covers, skin to skin, Lu Han’s gaze equal parts gentle and hungry still. Minseok wants to do the same for him even though he has no idea how to, but Lu Han just shakes his head with a soft smile and says _I’m_ _good._ Touched by the other’s selflessness and not wanting to be the only one pleasured, Minseok’s hand reaches down to grasp him anyway, at first tentative before he finds a rhythm, his touch making sure to linger in some places and speed up in others. Minseok likes the way every stuttering gasp and breathless moan arches out of the taller boy as his body bows towards Minseok and he presses his face into his neck. When Lu Han releases a shuddering gasp one last time against his shoulder, almost biting into the skin, Minseok has to actively quell the desire that springs back up in him. It’s clumsy and no doubt imperfect, but he forgets his insecurities quickly as Lu Han leans over him again and kisses his nose with a soft _You’re incredible._

They fall asleep with their legs tangled together, perfectly enclosed in their little paradise and comforted by the fact of each other’s nearness.

In the early morning, with clear sunlight permeating through the thin curtains, Minseok wakes to see that Lu Han has turned in the night, lying on his stomach with his face squashed against the pillow. Something spurs him to raise himself up on his elbows and leave kisses all over the other’s back, across the dips and rises of his spine. Lu Han wakes sometime during the course of his mouth’s exploring, the other boy humming softly as he realizes what Minseok is doing and lets him continue. When Minseok looks up at him, the sight arrests him and he is hit with the realization that this scenario looks exactly like his dream, that fateful, confusing dream almost two years ago that he clearly remembers to this day because of its significance. He exhales sharply, feeling so stupid for not realizing sooner that this was inevitable, that this was going to happen eventually, that they were going to fall into one another as surely as the earth grows damp after a long night of rain. Minseok ends up laughing softly, feeling very played by the heavens.

“What’s so funny?” Lu Han asks, voice gravelly from sleep, eyes still closed.

“Nothing,” Minseok says as he continues to rain down kisses all over the other boy’s back, picking up where the dreamt left off. “But I’ll tell you someday.”

When they sneak back into school a few hours later, the two surprisingly escape getting punished even though they did not acquire permission to be out overnight; they learn from a classmate that no one among their teachers thought to check the dorms at lights-out. Minseok breathes a sigh of relief, a part of him still bothered by the slight rule-breaking. As the two join their friends in the dining hall, Yixing takes one look at them and tries to hide a devious smile in front of Junmyeon, who is now apparently chummy enough with Yixing to sit with him at lunch. Yixing vaguely mumbles something about _there are younger people here_ , _please spare us,_ Minseok stammering to smooth over the slightly awkward moment when  Junmyeon asks about what Yixing means. Again, Minseok has to wonder if Yixing is actually a clairvoyant, or if it’s just that the bliss from their excursion is still etched clearly in the grins on their faces.

They take their final exams over the next three days. Minseok’s hand hurts by the end of such a stressful period, but for the most part he’s survived them, having studied so well even before his and Lu Han’s impromptu trip. The day before they part for the school break, the four spend their time outside, the beginnings of summer already evident in the thickening canopy of trees and the grass under their feet. When Minseok turns to look at Lu Han, he realizes that as much as he treasures the hidden moments with him, he still likes the moments in the open best, with Lu Han laughing and angelic, exuding enough warmth to rival the sun.

But  as with all things too beautiful to last, the paradise is bookended by the summer and the reality that they have to wake up soon and grow up.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Contrary to the initial plan of Lu Han staying in Seoul so he can invite Minseok over to his aunt’s house again sometime, he calls Minseok two weeks into the summer vacation and tells him that he’s being called back by his parents to China. Minseok sighs but can’t do anything about it, making Lu Han promise to call him whenever he can, resigned to another summer of being apart and afraid of the wavering the distance will cause his heart. Minseok keeps busy by joining his mother on her charity events, playing soccer with some of the boys in his neighborhood, and watching his sister’s favorite films with her at home. The majority of his time, however, is taken up by study sessions with his private tutor to prepare better for the upcoming aptitude tests that all high school seniors need to take to get into a university in the country.

About a month into the summer holidays, Minseok talks to his father about wanting to go to medical school next year.

“Are you truly sure about this?” asks his father seriously. Minseok nods, thinking about how his mother has raised him to think about others more than himself, that a high station in society is useless if it is not used to serve the people around him. He thinks about how she takes them to volunteer for charity events in their local church or in their town, giving back as a good Catholic would. Minseok decides he doesn’t want to be anything else in particular, so becoming a doctor is just as good. “You will be studying for six years and training for years more. It’s a perfectly good profession for you but it will be difficult. Have you thought about this enough?”

He has been sitting on the idea for a while now, actually. Junmyeon’s parents are doctors, and from the stories he hears from them he knows it’s far from being the glamorous, noble profession it often tends to be painted as; he knows that it will be long periods of studying and then long periods of training turning into long hours of working. Sharing in the affliction and often heartbreak of another person or someone’s family is far from being chivalrous, his uncle and aunt once said, but you still try to help them through it because it is your part in the organized chaos of this world. The words have always stayed with him, and Minseok remembers them now.

“Yes, Father, I know what it will mean for me, and I’ve thought about it,” Minseok says firmly. “I want to serve people as a doctor.”

“Very well,” his father says, straightening up in his seat. “Then you must know that you need to get a very high test score to be accepted into medical school. I trust that you can do that?”

“Yes, I think so,” Minseok answers.

His father smiles gently. “That’s good, son. I am proud of you for making this decision. You being a doctor is a good idea.”

Minseok then relays his intentions to his mother and his sister, who are likewise pleased with his decision.

“That will be so long and difficult,” his younger sister comments as they sit on the couch in the living room, her head leant on his shoulder as she mindlessly switches channels on the television. From her place on another armchair, their mother smiles at the picture they make. “But I think you’ll be fine,” his sister continues in her own way of showing support.

Minseok also hopes that he will be fine, except that Lu Han does not call him that week, nor the next, nor for the rest of the summer.

He is afraid to think about what it means, the burden on his shoulders now going beyond keeping them a secret, keeping _himself_ a secret, as he is now increasingly forced to confront his future. There is a very real possibility that, more than the distance between them and their duties to their  families, it might be _themselves_ that will drive them apart. Not because they  don’t love each other, no, but because they are powerless. They are young, and they can only do so much. The truth, when it comes down to it, is that Minseok cannot imagine him and Lu Han being together past graduation. He might have his plans but his fears prevent him from seeing Lu Han in any of them, because in all their time together, they have never once talked about what will come _after._

Minseok knows a great deal about stealing by now, all of his moments and days with Lu Han they have merely thieved from the world around them, a heist carried out by two boys who, as far as the world is concerned, have no business being together and carving out a paradise to call their own.

The thought that the past year still has not been enough to make Minseok as strong as he would like to be creeps into his bones, undoing the progress that he has made within himself. The scraps of bravery he has managed to pilfer within the bubble of their hidden moments for the past year slowly crumble, crashing down around him without a sound, its silence almost a crime given the way it used to crescendo inside him.

He does not dare call Lu Han’s number in Beijing.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

They become seniors in the fall. Minseok does not get a chance to see or talk to Lu Han again until he returns to their dorm. As soon as Minseok walks inside the door, Lu Han meets him halfway and wraps his arms around him tightly, whispering _I’m_ _sorry_ over and over against his shoulder. There is a weariness in which he moves his limbs, fatigue etched in the expression on his face, a finality in his posture as he pulls away. Minseok realizes like a blow to his chest that this is not the same smiling boy he said goodbye to at the beginning of summer.

When they talk, Lu Han explains that he went with his family to Europe for the whole summer, made to attend his parents’ business dinners all over different cities and playing the part of the perfect son who will carry their name, the sheer distance and ‘upholding his end of the deal’ having caused him to not be able to contact Minseok at all.  Bile spreads through Minseok’s gut at the implication, that the distance between them might now span more than an ocean and a plane ride, the specter of an ending hanging like a sword over their heads. Minseok then tells Lu Han about deciding to go to medical school, and Lu Han gives him a taut smile.

A part of Minseok knows, then. Lu Han tries to assure him that this does not change anything, that he’s still going to university in Seoul. “I’m still here with you, right?” Lu Han says in a brittle voice. “I’ve talked to my parents and I’m taking the test in November. Don’t worry too much about it, okay?”

For the first time, Minseok does not take Lu Han at his word, anxiety coursing through him even as he recognizes the words as white lies, designed to protect him from the worst of the truth, and this is the truth: that either one or the both of them will eventually leave—leave their blissful pocket of time behind, the time that they have stolen from reality and that reality is now going to take away. 

Minseok becomes acquainted with the truth that leaving constitutes not only a physical distance but also an emotional one, and with every passing day, the distance between him and the boy he loves grows and grows until Minseok cannot help but exist in a continuous cycle of guilt and devotion. Even as he continues to love, he slowly learns to pull away.

With only three months to go before their aptitude tests, their teachers continue to pound them with assignments that Minseok would like to think he barely even has the time to be sad, almost every waking moment consumed by lessons and homework. At times, Minseok gets the feeling of wanting to scream, tired and stressed and sometimes even disillusioned as his family phones him from home, asking about how his academics are going, unwittingly adding to the pressure of the upcoming aptitude tests and the limbo he exists in with Lu Han. The three roommates continue to study together and now Junmyeon joins them often, for which Minseok is thankful so that he and Lu Han have a real reason to pretend to be only good friends again. It hurts, but at least while they pretend to be friends, Minseok can forget about the impending separation that they will have to face as lovers.

Lu Han ends up often falling asleep from fatigue on top of his books and papers strewn all over his bed or in the library, continuing to keep to his promise of studying well for the test so he can go to a university in Seoul. As Minseok picks up a book that has fallen to the floor beside Lu Han’s bed, the Chinese boy having nodded off at an awkward angle, he realizes that he does not have the heart to tell Lu Han to stop trying so hard to keep up appearances for Minseok’s sake. They kiss less often now, and when they do, the brushes of their lips are not as sweet, tinged as they are by stress and sadness and a ticking clock so deafening in their attempts to squash it with silence, and Minseok has to pull away before he does something foolish, like burst into tears.

On the day of the test in November, a Thursday, Minseok wakes up to see Lu Han’s bed tidied and empty. His clothes and belongings remain where they are, but the glaring lack of his presence on a very important day spells an utter finality. Lu Han must have left in the early morning. And Minseok just _knows._

“Where is Lu Han?” he asks Yixing anyway, not wanting to believe the truth and needing to hear it at the same time.

“He’ll be back, Minseok,” answers Yixing, his voice tight, not meeting Minseok’s eyes. “He said he’ll be back.” It does not escape Minseok that Yixing didn’t say _when._

Minseok, Junmyeon, and Yixing sit through the tests for the whole day as high school seniors all over the country do the same. Minseok welcomes the chance to submerge himself in logic, in remembering all his lessons and choosing the best options and being comforted by the thought that at least there are questions that have exact answers. He does not give himself time to doubt his choices as he goes through question by question as though walking towards his future, a future where the place beside him stands empty, just like Lu Han’s seat next to Minseok’s throughout the day. After eight grueling hours, all the seniors are absolutely hammered by the end of it; Minseok foregoes dinner and falls asleep quickly, avoiding his thoughts and feelings and second-guesses.

On Friday, they are given the day to rest. Lu Han’s bed remains empty. Minseok lies in his, listless and heartbroken as he remembers the past two years. He remembers that morning in Lu Han’s aunt’s house, when he vowed that he would then be the one to protect Lu Han. If nothing else, he can still do that, at least; a decision forms in his mind. It pains him how everything has gone up in smoke and flames so quickly and so quietly, without a fuss, as though he feels that the unrest inside of him should merit a greater cacophony in the current disorder of his life, even as his heart still pounds with the unchanging rhythm of love, guilt, a little bit of anger and a whole heap of sadness.

On Saturday, despite everything, he just wants Lu Han back.

On Sunday, as Minseok walks out of the school chapel after Mass, a hand on his arm pulls him to a stop. Looking up, he almost doesn’t recognize the boy he loves as Lu Han stands before him. Where the other boy has always looked younger than his age due to his pretty, boyish face, now Lu Han looks his age of almost nineteen. The fire in his eyes is still there but significantly dulled, underscored by dark shadows underneath, and his hair has been dyed a dark shade of brown.

 

 

 

They sit in their hidden nook in the library, the small space made cavernous by the presence of the words hanging between them, yet to be said. Outside the window, the orange of the setting sun burns over the tops of trees and buildings and bleeds into the nook, painting Minseok’s sight a shade of pale fire. He looks over at Lu Han, sat on the other end of the seat leaving a deliberate space between them. Even the way that the sunlight does not reflect off Lu Han’s dark hair anymore hurts, an undeniable proof that their six years together will soon come to a close. That Lu Han is no longer the same boy that Minseok saw on his first day, pale hair sparkling, and he realizes that angels must leave their pedestals at some point to love and be loved elsewhere.

“My parents… didn’t think it was necessary for me to take the test anymore,” Lu Han swallows. Minseok decides that he hates that word, that this is so much more than taking whatever stupid test that supposedly determines their lives and so much more than simple separation and letting go. “They had me called back home in the early morning, so I couldn’t tell you.” He tries to reach across the seat to take Minseok’s hand in his, and the older boy allows it, not having the heart to deny anything from the other. “I still don’t know where I’m going to go, where they’ll make me go.”

Minseok steels himself. “I want to be honest.” He looks into the other boy’s eyes, and does his utmost to hide the tremble in his voice as he speaks. “Don’t stay here only for me. You should go where you need to go.” There’s no anger in the words, only resignation and heartbreak.

“What are you saying? Are you making me go?”

“I’m not saying this because I want you to, I’m saying this because we still have a lot of growing up to do.” Minseok takes a shaky breath. “You know that I’m still afraid, and I might always be. I’ll just end up hurting you in the process.”

Lu Han exhales sharply and his grip on Minseok’s hand tightens. “You don’t get to decide that for me,” he tries to protest. The emotion in his eyes turns a little manic as his brain catches up to Minseok’s words. “You don’t get to just turn me away when I want to do this with you. That’s not how love works, and I won’t leave just because you’re less than perfect, because we’re both young and imperfect. I want to try _._ ”

“But what if I _can’t_ try?” Minseok rasps out as he looks down at his other hand, clenched tightly on top of his knee.  It’s killing him to say these words, the fear that has always underlined his love even when their days were still blissful and brave now coming up to the surface. “My family is still my family, and being part of it means I have to do certain things, _be_ a certain kind of person. While  I’ve been with you, I’ve ignored the truth of it for so long. And I don’t think I can ignore it anymore.”

Even down to the moment that Minseok’s hurtful words wash over him, Lu Han just meets them with understanding. But now it seems that Lu Han is also ready to be honest with himself.

“It always hurt me when you tried to hide it, tried to hide _me,_ ” Lu Han whispers. “When you lied about being in Seoul with me. When I call you and you take so long to say ‘I love you’ back, like you can’t do it inside your house. When I kiss you in public and you look over your shoulder in fear of someone seeing it. Little things, but I should not have deluded myself into thinking you were perfectly fine with being with me.” Minseok feels the knife-edge of the words cut into his whole being. Upon seeing his expression, Lu Han still tries to protect him. He takes his chin gently to turn his eyes back to him. “I understand, God, I really do understand, and I don’t blame you, I can never blame you. But it doesn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. That _I_ didn’t hurt.”

Minseok has always been aware of the way disappointment wells up in Lu Han whenever he cannot meet the other’s honesty in his feelings with the same kind of openness. Hearing it said aloud, the words like volleys threatening to bruise him, makes him all the more regretful about putting Lu Han through so much.

“That’s why I can’t keep hurting you,” Minseok says thickly. “It will take me a long time. It might take me forever. You don’t deserve to sit around and wait for me to become stronger.”

At his words, Lu Han’s expression morphs like he’s still thinking about objecting, but moments later he sighs quietly, resigned, and Minseok wants to erase the hollow look on his face without taking back the words. And how can he unsay them, when this is a decision he has logically come to, perhaps the most _grownup_ decision he has ever made?

“When I started this with you, I thought I was prepared for the possibility of it coming to an end,” Lu Han continues. “I just didn’t realize how soon it would come, and how painful it would be.”

Minseok can no longer meet the other boy’s eyes. He has lived with so much guilt that sometimes the love that he feels is stained by it, twisting it into fear. If he knew it wouldn’t last, would he still have kissed Lu Han? Would it have been better to stay friends and not have known each other intimately, when it was only going to hurt them in the end? He realizes that the gossamer strands of bravery he has managed to gather have merely depended on ignoring the larger world around them, and now he sees that it is not real bravery, not real strength. Maybe, bravery means that they decide against what the world says about them. But Minseok knows he’s still not strong enough, and he’s terrified and nowhere near free.

Still, he cannot help but ask. “D-do you regret it?” Meaning: _Do you regret me?_

His eyes now swimming in unshed tears, Lu Han takes Minseok’s face in his hands. “Never,” he answers. “ _Never,_ okay? I want to keep you for as long as I can, for as long as we have left. We  don’t have to say goodbye now. Please don’t stop me from loving you for the rest of the time we have just because this has a finish line. Give me this at least, okay?”

For once, Minseok stops worrying that the curtains are still open. He comes closer and leans into Lu Han’s space, burying his face into his shoulder, the urge to weep and rage at the world wracking his body in tremulous breaths. Lu Han puts his arm around him, smoothing through his hair, and Minseok does not understand why he’s still being forgiving and tender when it’s him who’s slowly cutting the thread between them, all because of his fear, all because he _can’t._

“It's not our fault for growing up this way, you know,” Lu Han breathes into his hair. Minseok keeps his face hidden in the other’s shirt. “Me, for thinking that I have so much freedom; you, for having so little.

“But someday you’ll be stronger. Someday, someone’s going to kiss you in front of everybody, and you won’t care,” Lu Han presses like a promise to the side of his face. “It’s okay if that person won’t be me. But someday you’ll be strong enough for it, and that will make me happy.”

Their last five months go by in a daze, muddled by melancholy and the creeping reality that they will have to be without each other soon. Minseok sometimes thinks it was so cruel of him to decide to end it when the time comes, the rest of their moments before then essentially feeling like a drawn-out goodbye, but he cannot undo his words anymore. Yixing knows of what happened between them and tries to keep the atmosphere light, asking them to hang out in town and encouraging them to soak up the remaining bliss to be had, as few and far in between as it might be.

They move past winter and then into spring, and they officially turn nineteen, a little worse for wear, impending adulthood creeping into their eyes and muting some of the brightness in them. Minseok, having aced the aptitude tests, gets into his medical school of choice; Junmyeon intends to study law in Seoul as well; Yixing decides to return to China and study music; but Lu Han still doesn’t know where he’s going, just knows that he’s going to be staying in Beijing for a while before he pursues a degree picked out for him by his parents. Minseok’s heart twinges when Lu Han says it plainly, wondering how his parents can stomach practically robbing their child of his freedom. But both of them know they are powerless against it.

Minseok and Lu Han become intimate one last time, a week before their graduation, with the door locked and only the two of them in their dorm room. This time, it’s Minseok who takes the other boy into his mouth, wanting to return to him the same kind of pleasure he was given before. Lu Han’s fingers clutch at his hair as he struggles to breathe, Minseok pouring into it all the love and desire that is still as strong as ever even when they know it’s about to end. When Minseok’s throat flutters around him, Lu Han releases a shuddering gasp that leads to a breathless moan as he reaches his peak. Afterwards, Minseok catches sight of the other boy hastily wiping away a few tears that have escaped his eyes.

They promise to say no goodbyes. They go through their graduation rites, liberated by the school they have grown up in, soon to be shackled by the bigger world they are going to. It’s time to leave that contained environment and grow older. After the ceremony, Minseok’s and Junmyeon’s families meet Lu Han and his aunt briefly, as well as Yixing and his parents. He can only think, _Too_ _late_ , as their families exchange pleasantries and thank one another for taking care of their respective charges, now grown up into young men. Yixing watches on, a sorrowful look on his face as he sees Minseok and Lu Han struggling not to be mired in grief.

Later, when Minseok goes to collect all of his belongings from the dorm, Lu Han stays with him, the Chinese boy going to fly out tomorrow rather than today. Without a word, Minseok wheels his suitcase out of the door; still, he cannot help turning back to the boy watching him from his bed. As Lu Han gets to his feet, Minseok walks slowly over to him, wrapping the other in a gentle embrace as their foreheads rest together, breathing each other in for a brief moment. Lu Han glances down at his lips uncertainly, as if he feels he doesn’t have the right to kiss him anymore. So it falls upon Minseok to close the distance between their mouths, lips flush against one another’s as they share a kiss for the last time, soft and sweet and brimming with so much longing, so much love.

They leave the door open, now beyond caring about anyone who might walk past.

They break apart after a few seconds, seconds that will never be enough for a goodbye. Lu Han caresses Minseok’s face one last time as the deafening thump of his heart robs him of his capacity to speak, to say even a few parting words. Lu Han probably knows them already. Minseok turns away, once again walks out of the room and takes ahold of his belongings, carrying all the trappings of his youth for the past six years with him.

And then  he leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Epilogue  
Seoul, eight years later**

 

It starts drizzling just as Minseok emerges from the subway station. He looks up at the drops hitting the pavement, one by one at first, and then more steadily as he stays beneath the awning, the concrete under his feet darkening from the rain. Unfortunately, he didn’t think to bring an umbrella that day.

He pulls the hood of his dark red sweater over his head as he ducks out from under the station’s roof and heads towards the street. Fortunately, the drizzle remains light, so Minseok thinks he can manage the walk back to his apartment, which is some distance away from the station, in his umbrella-less state. He has always found comfort in this kind of fine rain, loved the way it slowly douses the trees and bathes the streets in a sheer mist. With his hands tucked deep inside his pockets, the light drops continue to fall on his hood and his shoulders, gradually dampening the cloth. Strangely, he is in no hurry to get home; in fact he is content to walk leisurely as his eyes feast on the sight of the yellow and orange leaves on the trees, some fallen to the ground and floating in small puddles formed by the rain.

Even though his profession does not have the word _consistency_ in its vocabulary, Minseok tries to be a person of routine, with his Americanos and medical journals and morning runs whenever possible.  He’s now doing his first year of residency in a big research hospital in Seoul, specializing in internal medicine, which, as one can probably imagine, is far from routinary, with its daily heaping of injured bodies, ailing patients and anxious family members. Minseok is often tired, but he loves what he’s doing.

He has just spent his day off sleeping in at the residents’ quarters until noon and then meeting an old friend in a café near the hospital. However, Minseok thinks that maybe he does need to sleep in his own bedroom every once in awhile, so now he’s walking to his apartment with the intention of taking some more rest. His mail might have also piled up in the five days or so that he has not been home. Most of them are normally useless anyway—heaps of bills, promotional letters, flyers advertising magazine subscriptions—but he dislikes the way they tend to accumulate in front of his door whenever he returns after a few days, feels antsy about the way they disturb the order of the place he has just come to call his own.

Minseok has not met his sister recently either, and he muses about inviting her to dinner whenever she has time off from managing her own art gallery. At twenty-four, she opened it a year ago with her first collection of avant-garde tinkerings, which on multiple occasions Minseok has tried to understand but just couldn’t, the artful workings of his sister’s mind too complex for him to decipher; still, he could see the beauty of them and why the exhibits are a success. He couldn’t be more proud of her.

As he becomes lost in his own thoughts, his rumination eventually carries him to a train of thought he rarely tries to visit if possible. Perhaps it is caused by the placidity of the misty afternoon and the nostalgia of fall, the white noise of people’s chatter and the smattering of rain a soundtrack to his remembering.

There have been three occasions of acceptance that he has gained in the years since—since _the boy._ Minseok knows he should stop calling him so because he’s probably as much of a grown man as him now, but he cannot help remembering him as such whenever he slips and thinks back to the days they once shared, the hidden ones as well as the moments in the open.

 _Someday you’ll be stronger_, the boy once said. Now Minseok supposes he can admit to himself that the boy was right.

When he had first come to live in Seoul at nineteen, in student housing near the medical school he was studying at, he had tried to function as normally as possible, as if he didn’t just get his heart broken at the end of spring. He went to his classes, assimilated into his new life, made new friends. He often welcomed the heaps of coursework medical school demanded of him, because it meant he wouldn’t have the time to ponder over what the boy could be doing at the moment.

It was difficult at first—God, how difficult and painful it was.

Whenever he passed by the old royal palace, Minseok tried to keep himself from dwelling on how much he wanted for the other boy to see that more buildings had been reconstructed, its old magnificence slowly returned to the palace’s fortifications. Whenever he ate street food with his friends, Minseok could only think of a presence beside him eagerly feeding him all the snacks he had never tried before. Whenever he went to a _noraebang_ _,_ he  couldn’t help but think about a breathless kiss and the blue-lit silhouette of a face once so familiar. And if he somehow happened to find himself near the neighborhood of the boy’s aunt that he had only been to once, he made sure to walk past very quickly for fear of what the remembrance would cause to the progress of forgetting he had already made in his heart.

And  God, how it hurt, how the longing seized him through cycles of guilt and self-hate at times, how it pained him to remember that he was the one that caused it, that he was the one who made the other go.

They didn’t even have a single picture together.

It was not easy, but he tried his utmost to be strong. Carried on hiding it, deep down, no one but those two other people who knew about him and his capacity to love, that he had once been in love with someone, _the boy._ He continued to study hard and to function just as he was expected to do.  And if he sometimes got lonely, well, he just had to deal with it in his own way.

Until one day he just broke.

Minseok was then in his second year in medical school. He had come from a party where he had just been sucked off by a young man whose name he didn’t even get; to his harrowed regret he realized he wasn’t drunk enough to allow another’s touch to mark him all the way, to erase the trace of the dearest person whose last caresses still remained on him, so he had stopped it from going further. Self-hate and disgust coursed through him as he boarded a bus back home, not because he was repulsed by the act, no, but because he was coming to face the reality that he was desperate enough for another’s touch that he would willingly replace the last time his body had been shown love with a mere drunken encounter.

When he arrived back to his family’s house in the middle of the night, he saw that only his sister was still awake. With her now being a senior in high school, Minseok could see how stressed and fatigued she was just as he had been at that age. So overwhelmed by the memories that came flooding back, the weight of his secret and the longing that had caused him to foolishly seek out company that night, no matter who the other person was, he found himself confessing everything to her in between choked sobs and stuttered words. It was the hardest he had ever cried in his life. He confessed about the boy with the angelic face, about how much he loved and wanted for the first time in his life, all while his tears flowed freely and hiccups ravaged his throat. His sister held him, patted his back as they sat on his bed, his head pillowed in her lap. She was then nineteen, the same age as he had been when the colossal love of his life had come to an end.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” his sister kept repeating. “I love you. _I love you._ It’s okay.”

Eventually Minseok’s sobs subsided and turned into shuddering breaths as her fingers smoothed through his hair. When Minseok had the courage to look up at her afterwards, she held his face and in her eyes he saw only sincerity and unconditional love.

“I love you,” his sister repeated, emphasizing each word. “I’m proud of you no matter what. Okay?”

That was the first acceptance. It came from someone within his own family, and it caused the siblings to grow closer than ever.

Strangely, after he had told his sister, a lightness began to settle in Minseok's bones, a certain kind of liberation. There came a moment when the longing had faded into a thing of the past, and in place of the emptiness there were just the memories, both fond and sore, which were all Minseok was left with. Where his longing used to be a raging river, a single glass of water was what remained, drained to the last drop with nothing to show for it but the leftover sensation of moisture.

And  one day, Minseok found to his surprise that it didn’t hurt anymore. Like a child, he tried to poke at the place where he had once been bruised to see if it would still ache, but there was no longer pain, or at least the throbbing had somewhat lessened, and he found that he could now breathe.

A few weeks later, he returned home again to check where his precious blue scarf was. He hadn’t brought it with him to the city because at first it pained him to look at it, a reminder of the memories that had still smarted like a gaping wound at the time. He couldn’t fully explain what he wanted to do with it, but now that the reminiscence of the past didn’t gnaw at him as much, he wanted to be at least comforted that there was still a relic from that time that had stayed with him.

After rooting around in his wardrobes for the better part of an hour and coming up empty-handed, he decided to ask his mother.

“Mom, have you seen that blue scarf?”

His mother’s expression was questioning. “Which one?”

“That blue one. The one I…” he trailed off, unable to say the name.

“Ah, the one your friend in Beijing gave you?” his mother said; something in her eyes looked uncertain. “Oh, well, I was looking through all your things, your dad’s and your sister’s, trying to find some old clothes to donate... Since it was in the bottom of your dresser, I… well, I thought you didn’t use it anymore.” She looked at him a bit plaintively. “Should I have not given it away?”

For a moment the air left Minseok’s chest and he swallowed; now the last reminder of the boy he had once loved was also gone. “It’s okay, Mom. I was just wondering.”

He dated a girl briefly then, a classmate of his, because she was kind and lovely and bright. The day he realized that something about her laugh reminded him of someone from so long ago, a laugh infectious and a little bit mischievous, Minseok had felt so stupid. Soon after that revelation he broke up with her. He couldn’t delude himself into thinking it could work; it was never going to work.

The second acceptance took a longer while to come.

Minseok graduated from medical school after six years, deciding that before his formal residency he wanted to gain some experience in public health service. His father knew a doctor who practiced in a small town near Daegu, offering his services pro bono to the community he served. He chose to intern at the clinic for a year and went to live in the town, settling himself into a small apartment with a view that just barely overlooked the hills of the nearby big city. The town itself, however, was divided into two parts—the residential area where most of its people lived, and the industrial area where several factories stood. In fact, a lot of the clinic’s patients were manual workers who were very prone to injuries, and he helped to treat a lot of them without pay. It was far from glamorous, but the small clinic was well-respected, wrapped and beloved by the community it tried to sustain.

In that small town where the clinic was located, Minseok came to meet Kim Jongin. He had treated the young man’s niece one day when she got badly scraped after falling down from a swing in the park, her uncle supposedly watching over her in the absence of his older sister. Worried about what she would say once she got back, the younger man hovered over his niece like a fretful bee, looking more terrified than the child seemed to feel. After Minseok had patched her up, the young man introduced himself as Jongin.

Dark-haired Kim Jongin was four years younger than him, had charismatic eyes and often wore a naturally captivating expression on his face even when he wasn’t doing anything in particular. The younger had just come back from his military service right after high school and was then figuring out what to do next. On some days he taught dance classes at a local studio, where most of his students were high schoolers who loved dance casually or kids who had to put on a talent show for the elementary school.

Minseok couldn’t explain it, but Jongin warmed up to him quickly like a cuddly bear, at first accompanying his niece who often wanted to visit Minseok and thank him for treating her, and then eventually coming on his own. Jongin started to join him on his late shifts at the clinic, talking him out of drowsiness or helping him clean up the place, so particular as Minseok was about keeping it orderly. And even though Minseok knew friendship was the only thing he wanted between them from the start, he couldn’t help but be beguiled by him sometimes.

Two months into their friendship, he asked Jongin to stop calling him _sunbaenim_ and call him _hyung_ instead. One month after that,  Jongin kissed him out of the blue.

They were alone in the clinic, Minseok cleaning up until late, Jongin hanging around to chat as per usual. Minseok did not see it coming. The younger man had sidled up to him and took his face in his hands, pressed his lips against his with an intensity that made Minseok’s spine tingle. It had been so long. He was so shocked that his instinct spurred him to respond for several long seconds, kissing back the younger man, until Jongin broke the embrace, his senses seemingly returning to him. He stammered out an apology, kept bowing again and again until Minseok took him by the shoulders to tell him that it was okay, that he didn’t mind. In Jongin’s eyes, he could see that the younger man immediately understood what he meant.

Eventually, he learned that Jongin had been in love with his childhood friend named Sehun all his life, but they had to separate when Sehun went to university in Seoul, leaving behind a lover that didn’t have dreams beyond teaching dance classes in their humble town. Minseok was all too familiar with that kind of heartbreak, of growing up and growing apart.

But  because Minseok was lonely—they were both lonely, trusted each other enough, and felt a deep affection and friendly attraction for one another—Minseok slept with him. It wasn’t quite making love, but there was enough respect and friendship between them to make it pleasurable and memorable. Minseok thought he owed it to Jongin to share in his loneliness, perhaps a foolish thought on his part, but he couldn’t regret it, not when they managed to offer each other both comfort and companionship, as private as it was, without fear.

“I know you’re looking for someone, hyung,” Jongin said as they laid in bed afterwards. Minseok marveled at how such a young person could be so perceptive, could feel Minseok’s ghosts in the way he kissed. “You’ll probably be looking for him in every single person your whole life, if you don’t find him soon.”

So  Minseok told Jongin everything, becoming the second person he had ever told of the one and only time he had loved. And unlike when he had told his sister, he didn’t weep; he stared into Jongin’s deep eyes and felt the truth of it tumble out of his mouth without hesitance. That he had loved just as he had once been loved. And Jongin understood.

The next morning, with Jongin’s words echoing in his mind, Minseok sat in front of his laptop, fingers hovering over the keyboard, itching to type the name that for so long he couldn’t think about without wanting to shut himself in a room. But in the end he closed the page, the distance and all the years in between getting the better of him. He wouldn’t know how to look up someone in Mandarin anyway.

When Jongin asked him about it the next time he came to the clinic, Minseok just shook his head. The younger man smiled ruefully in response and brushed his lips against Minseok’s.

That was the second acceptance, and it was bittersweet.

The third acceptance took him the longest to realize. It had been growing and growing, the years adding onto the foundation, the people he had encountered and their experiences enriching his, until such a point that he could look at himself and be at peace with the way he lived, with the way he had been with other people. Was it finally the strength that the boy had said Minseok would gain someday? He couldn’t know for sure, but he knew enough to realize: the third acceptance had come from within himself.

He still didn’t know how to tell his parents, _if_ he would even tell them, but he figured that he was old enough, a little bit strong enough, if it came down to it. His sister often said she would support him in everything he decided to do.  And Minseok believed he would eventually come to it, not now but someday, with the right person to lend him the rest of the bravery he needed, perhaps.

 

 

 

It starts drizzling just as Minseok emerges from the subway station.

In fact, before walking home to his apartment, it was Jongin that Minseok met up with back in the café. Even though Jongin still lives in his hometown and Minseok had to leave when his internship ended, taking his bittersweet experiences with him, they still keep in touch, the distance not a problem for their friendship as it is so easy now to just call or text the younger about anything. When they met up earlier that afternoon, Jongin told him that he had come to Seoul to find Sehun in his university and finally talk to him, to try to undo the rupture that his own fear of chasing his dreams had created between them. The younger man said he wanted to ask him if they could try again, to promise that he would do right by his childhood friend this time. Minseok wholeheartedly wished him the best.

He nearly walks past his own apartment building, so lost in all his deep reflections that he was almost blind to the world around him for a moment. The misty rain cascades still, his clothes undeniably damp by now. He ascends to his unit on the third floor and, as expected, sees that he has a heap of mail on his doorstep. He gathers them and enters the flat, depositing the bundle on his kitchen table where the various envelopes spill onto the surface as he frees himself of his sopping sweater. Shivering from the cool air brushing over his damp arms, he is just about to step into the shower when he glimpses an envelope that looks different among the rest. Mystified, he picks it up and sees on the front a name long buried in his memory.

For a moment, Minseok can’t breathe.

It seems that the person he’s been wanting to look for has found him first. How typical of him to get there before Minseok. Lu Han always did beat him to the punch.

Unsteadily, Minseok drops down onto a stool at the table and opens the mail. Inside is what looks to be a letter several pages long together with a few polaroid photographs jumping out from its folds. Trying not to let his hands shake, he sets aside the sheaf of paper and inspects the photos first. Among them he beholds the boy he once loved, unfamiliar moments frozen in snapshots that seem to have been taken in different cities, his face going from boyish to matured, his eyes a little harder but no less kind and lovely, his body now filled out in places that only adulthood can claim. Minseok finds eight pictures, perhaps one for each year they’ve been apart, the months and years written on the bottom of the each photograph. _December 2001:_ Lu Han bundled up thickly, the view of Niagara Falls behind him. _April 2005:_ Lu Han in a football stadium with his arms thrown up in celebration, victory of Manchester United going on behind him. _May 2007:_ Lu Han flashing a V-sign in front of an ancient church Minseok recognizes to be in Prague.

The last picture, the newest-looking one, on which _October 2009_ is scrawled, shows Lu Han in front of the newly reopened and restored  Gyeongbokgung Palace, where the two of them once went on a date as giddy young boys, where Lu Han once said he wanted to kiss Minseok just after two hours of being together, not caring if they were surrounded by people.  In this last photo, his hair is blond again. When the realization that the month written on it is the current one more fully hits him, Minseok has to take a deep breath.

There can be no doubt where Lu Han is now.

Minseok picks up the letter again, his eyes skimming through it because he doesn’t think he can read the full length of it, not right now, not with his heart thumping with equal parts longing and anticipation, the feelings he thought he has laid to rest all at once rekindling in him with a blaze he hasn’t felt since his younger years.  He rifles through the pages, words and phrases jumping out at him, words of regret, sadness, joy, but most of all, love, all mirrored and gushing inside him, as he sits robbed of the ability to think, only feel. At the bottom of the last page are the words that most seize his heart.

_So here it is, and here I am. I hope it’s not too late to learn each other again. Love, Lu Han. _

Minseok has to put down the letter to calm his breathing. After a few moments, he finds himself smiling, returning to the first page and steeling his nerves to take in the written words. He owes it to Lu Han now to read the words that he must have painstakingly branded onto the paper with all the memories he has carried with him through the years, just as Minseok has.

And  he knows. He just _knows_.

 

 

 


End file.
